Here’s a minuscule story: I’m ridding myself of a domain I started using for a sandbox in exchange for keeping jane.fyi, so I had to make a new sandbox—that is, a WordPress installation that’s online (because alas, I can’t do localhost on this Windows 10 laptop because the OS consumes so much storage). I need one so I can see the WordPress theme as I convert it from HTML to PHP theme files (what works best for me). I started with a new WordPress installation at a new sandbox location, which I’ll delete after I’m done with it (two themes), but didn’t want to go through the trouble of installing and configuring the maintenance mode plugin I’d been using.

Anyway, I wanted something really basic, so I put a maintenance mode code snippet into plugin form. I can’t be bothered to rely on the functions.php file for whatever theme I’m using, so using it as a plugin seemed best. 🤷

Requirements

• self-hosted WordPress (although it may work for Classic Press)
• some HTML knowledge (maybe)

The code

If you just want to paste it into your theme’s functions.php file ’cause you know what you’re doing and need it for a moment, it is:

// Activate WordPress Maintenance Mode
function wp_maintenance_mode() {
    if (!current_user_can('edit_themes') || !is_user_logged_in()) {
        wp_die('<h1>Under Maintenance</h1>
        <p>Be back whenever.</p>');
    }
}
add_action('get_header', 'wp_maintenance_mode');

Editable parts

• Change the text wrapped in the <h1> element to whatever you want
• Change text wrapped in the <p> element to whatever you want

You can add more code, e.g.

// Activate WordPress Maintenance Mode
function wp_maintenance_mode() {
    if (!current_user_can('edit_themes') || !is_user_logged_in()) {
        wp_die('<h1>Sandbox</h1>
        <p>This is a sandbox that only I play in. Find me @</p>
        <ul>
            <li><a href="https://hej.gay">My personal blog</a></li>
            <li><a href="https://crunchyfamily.com">A collab blog</a></li>
            <li><a href="https://smoothiesbycolor.com">Smoothie recipes blog</a></li>
        </ul>');
    }
}
add_action('get_header', 'wp_maintenance_mode');

Just make sure you use the HTML code for any apostrophes you use (') and double quotes (“,”) for HTML requiring it.

Download as a plugin

I’ve seldom messed with Github releases, so I got off to a rocky start, but the final one (as far as I know) is v1.2. The plugin includes a precaution I apply to all my custom plugins, i.e. displaying a poop emoji to anyone who dares visit the direct URL of the file. 😏

As long as the plugin/theme with this snippet in it is active, the maintenance mode will be shown to anyone who visits any page of your website and is not logged in.