Enabling and Disabling Maintenance Mode

Goal¶

Put your site in maintenance mode to allow users with the right permissions to use the site while users without this permission are presented with a message that the site is under maintenance.

Prerequisite knowledge¶

Concept: Security and Regular Updates

Site prerequisites¶

If you want to use Drush to enable or disable maintenance mode, Drush must be installed. See Concept: Additional Tools.

Steps¶

You can use the administrative interface or Drush to enable or disable maintenance mode.

Enabling maintenance mode using the administrative interface¶

1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Configuration > Development > Maintenance mode (admin/config/development/maintenance). The Maintenance mode page appears.
2. Fill in the fields as shown below.

   Field name	Explanation	Value
   Put site into maintenance mode	Enable the maintenance mode
   Message to display when in maintenance mode	The information that is shown to website visitors when the mode is enabled. Variables such as @site can be used in the message	@site is currently under maintenance but should be back shortly. Thank you for your patience.

3. Click Save configuration.
4. Verify that the site is in maintenance mode by accessing it from another browser where you aren't logged in. If you are not able to verify, try clearing the cache. See Clearing the Cache.

Disabling maintenance mode using the administrative interface¶

1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Configuration > Development > Maintenance mode (admin/config/development/maintenance). The Maintenance mode page appears.
2. Fill in the fields as shown below.

   Field name	Explanation	Value
   Put site into maintenance mode	Disable the maintenance mode
   Message to display when in maintenance mode	No message required while disabling. You can leave the field blank.

3. Click Save configuration.
4. Verify that the site is no longer in maintenance mode by accessing it from another browser where you aren't logged in. If you are not able to verify, try clearing the cache. See Clearing the Cache.

Enabling or disabling maintenance mode using Drush¶

1. Follow the user interface steps above to edit the site maintenance message, if desired.
2. Run the following Drush commands to enable maintenance mode and clear the cache:

   drush config:set system.maintenance message "Optional message" -y
   drush state:set system.maintenance_mode 1 --input-format=integer
   drush cache:rebuild
   

3. Run the following Drush commands to disable maintenance mode and clear the cache:

   drush state:set system.maintenance_mode 0 --input-format=integer
   drush cache:rebuild
   

4. After running either set of commands, verify that your site is either in or out of maintenance mode by visiting the site in a browser where you are not logged in.

Expand your understanding¶

• Updating the Core Software
• Updating a Theme
• Updating a Module

Videos¶

Attributions

Written and edited by Boris Doesborg, Jojy Alphonso at Red Crackle, and Jennifer Hodgdon.