Problem: You want to work on your site and close it to the public. Unfortunately WordPress has no means of giving the admin the ability to close a site so that the public can not have access to it. If you are updating a number of plugins or pages you want to keep the public out until all is completed. Below are a few quality maintenance plugins that can do the trick. A utility like this can also double as a "Site in Construction" or "Coming Soon" frontpage.
October 3, 2012
Ultimate Maintenance Mode
Pros: Easy to setup, you may work on your site while in maintenance mode.
Cons:
- You can easily lock yourself out if maintenance mode is active and you log out of WordPress. The solution requires a FTP connection to remove plugin
- Working with multiple individuals for site enhancement while wanting to close it down to the public becomes impractical, if using Ultimate Maintenance or Ultimate Coming Soon plugins
Scenario: You are building or modifying the site whereas it is just better to shut it down from the public. You have 2 individuals, one will be adding images, the other content, you will be modifying page layout to accommodate the new look. Since WordPress has no built in function to close down your production site while you work on it, you have decided to use Ultimate Maintenance Mode or Ultimate Coming Soon plugin.
Because each party has different times to work, they each must first contact you so that you can allow them access to the site. For each person, including yourself, you must rename the plugin, then when have each logged in, then rename the plugin back to its original name so that it become active again. As you see this is not practical especially if you do not have phone.
Solution: Create a login routine within the Ultimate Maintenance and Coming Soon plugin. There is no need for a database, just allow one master password and hand them out to the team. when you have entered the correct password, you have access to log into your WordPress site.