Have you ever seen your website showing some weird error pages or consuming the disk space? If you did, you might have put it in the maintenance mode.
Well, when your website is creating some trouble with the server, you must disable it. Let’s say, your visitors are getting so many error pages, and you still keep the site online, at such a case, your server may get consumed more than the usual.
So, it’s necessary to take a step ahead and display a maintenance page. Nowadays, there are many plugins, but you should also know the manual method using cPanel.
In this tutorial, you’re going to learn about disabling a troublesome WordPress site using cPanel in no time. I hope, you know a little bit about the WordPress core files.
Edit the .htaccess File to Display 503 Temporary Offline Page
As you already know, WordPress has two vital files including .htaccess. The file controls all the redirects and many rewrite rules.
In this tutorial, you need to edit the file to display 503 temporary unavailable/offline for your site. You can add anything creative to let your readers know the exact time limit you can bring your website live.
Let’s start the process.
Step 1:
As usual, you need to log in to your cPanel account and search for the file manager icon under the files‘ section.
You may see a different cPanel layout because your web hosting may be using its design template. If you use, Bluehost, Siteground, Inmotionhosting, or any other reliableweb hosting, you can find the file manager icon.
Click to open.
Step 2:
It’s possible that you see the home directory by default. Make sure you see the public_html directory by clicking on its link from the left-hand sidebar.
Step 3:
Scroll down, and you can find the .htaccess file. If you don’t, it means you haven’t enabled to display the hidden files.
Go to Settings from the top-right corner and check the box to show hidden files.
Step 4:
If you see the .htaccess file, right-click to edit.
Step 5:
A popup appears to provide an option to disable encoding. You don’t need to worry about anything, click on the Edit button a new tab appears in your browser.
Step 6:
You can see the code of the file. Copy and paste the code.
ErrorDocument 503 "<h1>Site is Temporarily down for Troubleshooting</h1>" RewriteEngineOn RewriteRule .* - [R=503,L]
Click on the Save Changes button from the top-right corner. Clear your browser cache and check your site, it shows a default error page with an error message you have added inside the code.
You can modify the error message to make your readers aware so that they can check your site after some time.
Some people use the simple HTML to give an attractive look to the page. Can you do it? If not, it’s perfectly fine. The primary motive is to let the search engine and the readers know that you’re working on the site.
NOTE: You shouldn’t disable your site for many days. Try to fix it as soon as possible.
Sometimes, the search engines bots consider such a site permanently offline, which may affect the search indexing of the site.
I Hope it’s Not So Difficult to Disable a Website
You may be wondering as if why you shouldn’t use a plugin t do so. Well, while troubleshooting, the first step is to disable all the WordPress plugins.
So, I am sure, you have gotten your answer. Using the manual method is much better than a plugin. You can use the .htaccess file for many other reasons.
Conclusion
Adding the code to display a 503 error message is a good idea. As I have mentioned before, you can show your creativity using some words.
I hope it’s not hard to edit .htaccess.
Check out these top 3 WordPress hosting services:
- Click here to get the best wordpress hosting specialized for wordpress.
