A maintenance page informs visitors that a website is undergoing maintenance and is unavailable. It helps to avoid frustrating users and enables maintenance personnel to focus on implementing changes. Many website maintenance systems come with a basic maintenance page template, and notices may be posted several days before scheduled maintenance. It’s important to update the information on the maintenance page to keep people informed.
A maintenance page is a page that informs visitors to a website that the website is undergoing maintenance and is unavailable. All of the website’s content still exists, but is not accessible to visitors during the maintenance period. Persons with authorized access to the site may be able to view and manipulate the website, enabling them to perform necessary maintenance.
There are several reasons to use a maintenance page. In some cases, maintenance will irritate users and destabilize the website, making it easier for the website to be taken down while maintenance is completed to avoid frustrating people. During maintenance, the site’s appearance could change rapidly, links could change and other anomalies could occur; people on the site may lose their jobs, get confused, or accidentally interfere with the maintenance process. In these cases, putting the site into maintenance mode will make it easier for the maintenance person or people to focus on implementing the changes.
In other cases, the entire site actually needs to be taken down for work, in which case a maintenance page is needed to alert people to what’s going on. A website may change content management systems, implement substantial updates, or take other performance-enhancing steps that may result in temporary inaccessibility.
Many website maintenance systems and content management systems come with a basic maintenance page template. The template usually allows users to change the maintenance message; the message could direct visitors to another temporary site, provide information about when updates should be completed, and so on. It’s helpful for visitors to have information like “the site is down for maintenance between 2:00 UTC and 6:00 UTC” so they know when to check back.
Some websites undergo regular scheduled maintenance. In this case, notices may be posted several days before the maintenance notifying users that the site will be down for a certain period on a certain day. Especially for things like online banking, people usually like to know in advance when they won’t be able to access a website, so they can plan for it.
Sometimes maintenance takes longer than expected, in which case it’s a good idea to update the information on the maintenance page to keep people informed. Some websites may also offer to update readers by email when the site is back in stock.
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