Re: simple easy way to turn to maintenance mode (Apache Users)

On Mon, May 28, 2012 at 12:43 PM, Mark Montague <mark@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On May 27, 2012 7:42 , Miguel Gonzalez <miguel_3_gonzalez@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

I'm administering Apache and Tomcat web servers. From time to time we have to turn the web server down and would be nice to have a maintenance mode message to the users.

If what you are doing maintenance on is actually a web application and it's database, then you may be able to keep Apache HTTP Server running to provide the maintenance mode message. The easiest way to do this is with login in the web application itself. However, you could also have a second set of Apache HTTP Server configuration files that cause httpd to do nothing but serve the static maintenance message for all URLs under your web virtual hosts -- when you begin maintenance, stop httpd and start it up again using the new configuration files, and when you end maintenance stop httpd and start it using your regular configuration files.

We use mod_rewrite:

RewriteEngine On

# TO ALLOW YOURSELF TO VISIT THE SITE, CHANGE 111 222 333 444 TO YOUR IP ADDRESS.

# RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^111\.222\.333\.444$

RewriteRule .* - [R=503,L]

Courtesy of http://25yearsofprogramming.com/blog/20070704.htm