Obviously, it takes time to build a website. Even when your website is completed and ready to run publicly, there are still times you want to lock it for a moment or even days to prepare for new updates.
The cases could be you want to launch a new product or refresh the website with a new theme, new layout, and appearance. Worse, some unexpected bugs are found and need to be fixed in time. That’s when you have to disable your website for visitors.
However, you also want to show some information to tell your users what’s going on and your website will be working soon. The Coming Soon Page or Maintenance Mode is a straight forward and attractive way to inform them.
So, before showing you effective ways to create a Coming Soon page and Maintenance Mode, let’s explore the basics as well as figure out which one is more suitable for your situation.
- What is a Coming Soon Page?
- What is Maintenance Mode?
- Create Coming Soon Page & Maintenance Mode Using Plugins
- Don’t Let your Visitors Down
What is a Coming Soon Page?
Coming Soon Pages are normally used when you are working on a new project. For example, when adding new features to your existing website, you can use Coming Soon Page to ultimately judge and inform your situation to visitors.
Why Do We Have to Create the Coming Soon Page?
As mentioned, Coming Soon Page is the ideal way to tell your visitors that there will be something new and exciting here. A Coming Soon Page also returns your website an HTTP status “200” and permits your website to be indexed by search engines while you are still working on your site or page. And last but not least, a Coming Soon Page will create a better user experience and a good impression of your brand than a broken website.
What is Maintenance Mode?
Maintenance Mode is a status you use to inform your visitors that your website – or part of it – is currently doing short term maintenance.
By default, WordPress creates a notification page that informs your visitors that your site is under the construction. However, it’s just a plain page with the text “Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.”. This may create a bad user experience for your visitors and a poor impression on your potential customers. Ideally, you can level up this notice by designing a more interactive page to inform users about this inconvenience.
Why Do We Need to Activate the Maintenance Mode?
The Maintenance Mode will let Google or other search engines know your site is under maintenance and it should come back in one day when the maintenance is finished. Every time you make a small change like updating content, fixing some minor issues, or changing color schemes, you are unnecessary to activate maintenance mode.
However, if you implement bigger changes that take longer to finish, this will prevent visitors from accessing your website. You should use Maintenance Mode for those situations to create a better user experience.
Who Can See your Website While it’s Under Construction
Only logged-in users such as editors, authors are able to see your website during the construction. Whereas visitors or even customers will see the Coming Soon Page or Maintenance Mode Page, which depends on which mode you activate.
Creating a Coming Soon Page or Maintenance Mode Using Plugins
Both modes are essential for your site, and each of them serves certain purposes. After you determine the most suitable one, let’s see how we can create a Coming Soon Page and Maintenance Mode quickly and easily.
The best way is to use WordPress plugins. WordPress provides a diverse repository with thousands of choices helping its users reduce the painfulness when adding extra features. So which WordPress plugins are common and trusted by other people recently?
Let’s start to find suitable plugins for both Coming Soon Page and Maintenance Mode. The 5 following plugins are common and used currently by a lot of users due to their convenience and utility.
Minimal Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode – Coming Soon Page
This plugin allows you to install a Coming Soon Page and Maintenance Mode Page quickly & simply even for Landing Page or Launch Page for your website. It can work with all WordPress themes & plugins. Besides, it connects easily with the MailChimp API and is fully GDPR compliant.
The plugin has more than 80,000 active installations now. With the Pro version, customers are able to explore over 120 themes, a million premium images, other Instagram filters, and content animations. SEO preview and analysis tools are also included in the Pro version.
CMP – Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode Page
It is a free Coming Soon and Maintenance Mode plugin that any WordPress user can find easily. CMP plugin is well compatible with any device and every WordPress theme. If you want to display your social media icons for visitors to take a look while waiting for the website back to ready, CMP also helps you with ease.
Each user has access to more than 20 themes and chooses new themes released every 1-2 months. This plugin will set a response code to search engines for you. There are other advanced features such as Redirect Mode to switch your website to another website, or Subscribe feature protected by Google ReCAPTCHA integration, and so on.
Site Offline Or Coming Soon Or Maintenance Mode
This plugin is easy to set up and manage. It provides you with a ready template including a countdown timer. Like other plugins, it has responsive design and you can access unlimited colors. Besides, it has a mix of features like Css3 Animations, Live Preview option, Logo customization, and so on.
If you purchase the Pro version, there are more than 31 specific features such as Full SEO control, Auto Launch, Social Profile Drag and Drop, Mad-Mimi & Mailchimp Newsletter Integrated.
Nifty Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode Page
This simple plugin will help you create the amazing and fantastic Coming Soon Page and Maintenance Mode. You can alter the text part on Coming Soon Page, build the count down timer, create a subscription, and more.
Using this plugin you can set up a background slider with overlay pattern and opacity. It’s free for you to activate or deactivate any section of the page, and select Google Fonts like premium features.
Password Protect WordPress Pro
When your website is still under construction or upgrading, it would be better if you turn it into a private page without worrying about outsiders’ intrusions. Password Protect WordPress Pro (PPWP Pro) allows you to password protect the entire site and exclude certain pages or posts for different purposes.
In this case, you might design a splash page, or a welcome page to inform users as well as give them a quick overview of your site’s business. At the same time, the rest of your website is protected with passwords. Users only see the password form covering the whole page, no more, no less.
What’s more, the plugin also helps you password protect every single page, post, custom post type, and WooCommerce category. If you want to restrict access to certain content based on user roles, the features are available for you to set up. It works as a double shield for your site, you only need to prepare the content, and leave the protection job for PPWP Pro.
Don’t Let your Visitors Down
The Coming Soon Pages and Maintenance Mode are effective marketing tools so that we should care about their design. If you want to make a great impression on your clients or generate leads, you should think about these plugins.
The 5 suggestions above are the most useful and popular plugins among WordPress users since it helps them create a Coming Soon Page and Maintenance mode effortlessly. In fact, the Password Protect WordPress Pro doesn’t directly help you create a coming soon page or maintenance mode. But if you know how to make use of its features, creating a coming soon page along with protecting the entire site will no longer be a problem.
If you still have any questions about Coming Soon Page and Maintenance Mode, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comment section below.
