Maintenance mode SGEN — put your site on hold while you work

In short. Go to Tools → Maintenance Mode, write your holding message, flip the toggle on, and click Save Changes. Every public visitor now sees your message instead of your site. Your admin session at /sg-admin/ stays fully accessible throughout. When you are done, return to the same page, flip the toggle off, and save. Nothing on your site is changed while maintenance mode is on — it only redirects public visitors. Verify in an incognito window before and after.

On this page: Scope · Fields · Good use cases · Steps · What success looks like · Troubleshooting · Tips

Maintenance mode SGEN is a two-step control: one toggle to redirect all public visitors to a holding page, and one text area to write the message they see.

While maintenance mode is on, the rest of your site stays intact — you are not deleting anything. Turn it off when you are done and everything comes back exactly as you left it. Your admin session at /sg-admin/ keeps working throughout — only public (non-admin) visitors are redirected.

What is this for?

Maintenance Mode is the controlled hold switch for your public site. Use it whenever you need to make changes that would look broken, incomplete, or confusing to a visitor mid-way through.

Common triggers: a content migration, a new page that is half-built, a product launch that needs to go live at a precise moment, or a payment-provider swap that requires a clean cutover window. Visitors land on your custom holding page instead of a broken page, a blank page, or an error screen.

It is a blunt instrument — every public URL triggers the holding page for every visitor, with no filtering by country, device, or user type. That is also its strength: zero ambiguity about what the public sees.

Scope

Maintenance Mode is a site-wide, all-visitor redirect. There is no partial scope — when it is on, every public URL on the site returns the holding page to every visitor, regardless of page, device, country, or referral source. Admin sessions at /sg-admin/ are not affected.

What it affects:

• All public-facing URLs on the site (pages, posts, product pages, blog posts, contact, shop)
• All visitors who are not logged in as an admin
• Search engine crawlers (important for SEO — see What NOT to use this for for crawl impact)

What it does not affect:

• Your admin panel at /sg-admin/ — fully accessible throughout
• Any data, pages, posts, or settings on your site — nothing is modified while maintenance mode is on
• Other sites on your SGEN account — Maintenance Mode is per-site, not account-wide

Fields

The Maintenance Mode form has two fields. Both are saved together with a single Save Changes click.

A filled-in Maintenance Mode screen, ready to save:

Good use cases

Maintenance mode is the right tool when you need a clean window of time to make changes that would look broken or incomplete if a visitor arrived mid-way through.

Homepage or section overhaul — Enable maintenance mode before removing the old layout so no visitor sees a half-assembled page. Disable only after you have verified the rebuilt page in admin preview.

Operator or agency handover — The domain has been transferred and you need a few hours to update credentials, email settings, and redirects before the site goes live. A holding message prevents visitors from hitting a broken contact form or an unconfigured shop.

Planned downtime with a fixed return time — Migrating a payment provider, switching hosting, or running a database operation. Tell visitors when you will be back and, if applicable, what else is still available — a phone number or email for urgent enquiries.

Pre-launch freeze — Build is complete and pages are published, but nothing should be publicly visible until the launch announcement. Enable maintenance mode now. On launch day, disable it and the full site comes up instantly. No deployment step.

What NOT to use this for

• Password-protected areas or member-only content — Maintenance Mode redirects the entire public site, not a section of it. For locking down a single page or selling access to a members area, see Site Protection.
• Long-term "coming soon" pages — A site in maintenance mode for weeks or months can be penalised by search engines because your pages stop being accessible to crawlers. For a holding page lasting a day or two, maintenance mode is fine. For a site months away from launch, publish a minimal real page instead.
• Staging or preview environments — Maintenance mode blocks clients too (unless they have admin access). A staging subdomain or a password-protected page is a better fit for sharing work-in-progress.
• A/B testing or partial rollouts — Maintenance mode is all-or-nothing. It has no mechanism to show the holding page to some visitors and the real site to others.

How this connects to other features

• Site Protection — A sibling feature in the same Tools area. Site Protection lets authorised visitors through with an access key; Maintenance Mode shows a holding page with no bypass. Choose Site Protection for beta-testing with a small group; choose Maintenance Mode for full lockdowns.
• SG-Builder (Page editor) — The recommended companion when making structural changes that would look broken mid-edit. Enable maintenance mode before opening the builder on any public page, and disable it only after verifying the rebuilt page in admin.
• Redirects — If you are restructuring your URL layout at the same time as running maintenance, set up your new redirects before you turn maintenance off so visitors land on the right pages immediately.
• Blacklist — Both Maintenance Mode and the Blacklist intercept public requests before the page is rendered. They can both be active at the same time. Maintenance Mode affects every visitor; Blacklist affects only visitors from blocked IPs.

Before you start

• Admin access required. Editor and Contributor roles cannot reach the Tools area. If you do not see Tools in the left sidebar, check your account role under Users.
• Write your message first. Know what you want to say and whether you need plain text or basic HTML before you flip the switch.
• Set a reminder. There is no built-in auto-disable timer. A calendar alert is your only safeguard against forgetting to turn it off.
• Plan the order of operations. If this is part of a larger change (URL restructure, theme swap, payment provider migration), plan the sequence before flipping the switch: enable maintenance, make your changes, verify in admin, then disable.
• Warn active teammates. If someone is editing in SG-Builder, let them know before you enable — visitors are blocked immediately after you save.
• Have an incognito window ready. Your logged-in admin session may be exempt from the holding page. A non-admin view is the only way to confirm visitors see the message.

Where to find it

1. Log in to your SGEN admin at /sg-admin/.
2. In the left sidebar, click Tools.
3. Click Maintenance Mode in the Tools sub-menu.

The page loads at /sg-admin/tools/maintenance_mode. Bookmark it if you run planned maintenance windows regularly.

If you do not see the Tools menu item, your account does not have admin-level access. Only admins can reach this screen.

Steps

Maintenance mode takes four steps from start to finish: write your message, flip the switch on, do your work, and flip it off.

The form saves both fields together in a single Save Changes click — you do not need to save the message and the toggle separately.

1. Write your holding message

The Content field holds the HTML that visitors see while maintenance is on. The default text reads "We'll be back soon!" with your site name. Edit it to match your tone and situation.

Plain text works fine. For line breaks, use paragraph tags: <p>Your first paragraph.</p><p>Your second paragraph.</p>. Bold (<strong>) and italic (<em>) tags are also safe to include.

A pasteable starting template:

<p> <strong>your businessstrong> is down for a short while — we'll be back at <strong>3 pm todaystrong>.p><p> We're making improvements behind the scenes. Thank you for your patience.p><p> In the meantime, reach us at <a  href="mailto:hello@yourdomain.com">hello@yourdomain.coma>.p>

2. Toggle maintenance mode on

At the top of the form, flip the Enable maintenance mode? switch to on. The switch turns red to show it is active. Then click Save Changes in the right-side card.

Your site is now in maintenance mode. Every public visitor — including anyone who has the URL saved or arrives via a search engine — sees the holding message instead of your pages.

3. Do your work

Make your changes: rebuild a page in SG-Builder, update products, reconfigure settings, migrate content. Your admin session is not affected — navigate freely in /sg-admin/. Verify your changes look correct in admin preview before turning maintenance off.

4. Turn maintenance mode off

Return to Tools → Maintenance Mode, flip the switch to off, and click Save Changes. Your public site comes back immediately.

Open a fresh incognito window and visit your homepage, a product page, and a blog post to confirm all three load normally. If any page returns an unexpected result, check your Redirects settings before disabling maintenance again.

What success looks like

After saving with the toggle on, a green confirmation banner appears at the top of the form:

Then confirm on the public side:

• Open a private or incognito browser window (not logged in as admin) and visit your site's homepage. You should see your holding message instead of your normal homepage.
• Visit a product page, a blog post, and your contact page from the same incognito window — they all show the holding message.
• Your admin remains fully accessible at /sg-admin/ in your normal signed-in tab.

After saving with the toggle off, refresh your public homepage in the incognito window. It loads normally. Your content, design, and navigation are unchanged — maintenance mode touches nothing while it is on.

Examples in context

The three scenarios below show the most common reasons admins reach for maintenance mode.

Homepage overhaul — rebuilding a page before it goes live.

Enable maintenance mode with the message "We're working on some updates — we'll be back soon!" before deleting the old sections. Visitors who arrive during the rebuild see the holding page instead of a half-assembled layout. Once the new homepage is published and verified in admin preview, flip maintenance off. The public sees the new design the moment you save — no deployment delay.

The visitor-facing result during the rebuild:

Operator handover — clean cutover window.

Enable maintenance mode before beginning a handover checklist (updating admin credentials, verifying SMTP settings, confirming redirects). The window runs with zero visitors hitting broken admin screens or unconfigured forms. When the handover is confirmed, flip maintenance off. The public site comes back with no changes to any content, design, or settings other than the ones made during the handover.

Planned downtime — payment provider migration with a return time.

Enable maintenance mode a few minutes before the migration window with a specific message: "your business will be back at 3 pm — our tasting events are still on!" The message reassures regulars that the physical location is not affected — only the online shop is temporarily offline. After migration completes, flip maintenance off, save, and open an incognito window to confirm the shop loads and checkout works before stepping away.

What to do if it does not work

• You saved but the public site still shows normal pages — Try loading the page in a private or incognito browser window that is not logged in as admin. Your own admin session may be exempt from the holding page redirect. Non-admin visitors see the holding page even when you do not.
• The toggle is grayed out or the page does not load — Confirm you are logged in with admin-level access, not an editor or contributor account. Only admins can access the Tools area.
• Your holding message shows SGEN Documentation instead of your site name — Edit the content field and replace SGEN Documentation with your site name typed directly. Save again.
• You turned maintenance off but the holding page still appears for some visitors — Browser caching or a CDN layer may be serving the old response. Ask visitors to hard-refresh (Ctrl+Shift+R on Windows, Cmd+Shift+R on Mac). If you use a CDN, purge the cache for your domain after turning maintenance off.
• The holding message looks unstyled or plain — The holding page inherits minimal styling from SGEN. Keep your message short and avoid relying on CSS classes from your active theme — they do not apply on the holding page. Plain text or simple HTML renders cleanly without theme styles.
• You cannot see the Maintenance Mode item in the sidebar — Only admin-level accounts can see and access the Tools area. Log in with an admin account, or ask your site owner to grant your account admin access from the Users panel.

Tips for a smooth maintenance window

Write the message before you flip the switch. Craft your holding message first, save it with the toggle still off, and only then flip the toggle on and save a second time. This way the correct message is in place the moment the first visitor is redirected.

Tell visitors when you will be back. "We'll be back soon" is better than nothing. "We'll be back at 3 pm today" is far more reassuring and gives visitors a reason to return. If you know the time, write it in. If not, give a range: "back within two hours."

Include a contact option for urgent enquiries. A single line — "Reach us at hello@yourdomain.com" — prevents visitors who need to get in touch from bouncing away with nowhere to go.

Test it in an incognito window before you step away. Your admin session may be exempt from the holding page. Open a private window, visit your homepage, and confirm the holding message appears exactly as intended — right copy, no raw HTML tags visible, no broken characters.

Set a reminder to turn it off. There is no auto-disable timer. A calendar alert for the time you plan to re-enable is your only safety net. Even a 10-minute overrun can frustrate visitors who refreshed expecting to see the site back.

Keep windows short. Search engines notice when pages stop being accessible. A window of a few hours is routine; anything over 24 hours starts to look like an outage to crawlers. If you need more than a day, consider publishing a minimal real page so crawlers have something to index.

Verify after disabling. After turning maintenance off, open your homepage, a product page, and a blog post in a fresh incognito window to confirm all three load normally. URL restructures during maintenance can leave some pages pointing at old paths — check your Redirects settings if anything returns an unexpected result.

Coordinate with your team before enabling. If another admin is actively editing in SG-Builder when you flip maintenance on, their work is unaffected — but they may not realise the public side has gone dark. A quick message before you enable prevents confusion.

Related features

• Site Protection — lets authorised visitors through with an access key instead of a full lockdown. Use when you want a client or a small test group to preview your site without blocking everyone else.
• Manage redirects — set up URL redirects before you turn maintenance off when you have restructured pages during the window. Visitors arriving on old URLs will land on the right pages the moment the site comes back.
• Site settings — where your site name, contact email, and other global defaults live. Make sure your site name is correct before you write it into your holding message.

Next step

When maintenance is off and your changes are live, verify the public site loads correctly on mobile and desktop.

If you restructured any URLs during maintenance, check your Redirects settings to confirm visitors arriving on old links land on the right pages.

If this was a pre-launch freeze, your next step is confirming that search-engine indexing is enabled under SEO → Global SEO — new SGEN installs ship with indexing off by default.