Featured Plugin: Maintenance Mode
I used to always wonder if people used a test blog or some kind of separate wordpress set up as they made changes to their blog design. It turns out that there is a plugin called Maintenance Mode that allows you you to set up a splash page that your readers will see as you work on the blog. While you are logged in as admin, you will be able to see the blog and the admin panel however your visitors will not have to deal with the changes you are making.
This is a great plugin and I have used it on the blog for over a year. I decided to blog about the plug-in considering that I am planning a major move to change my main domain to www.enkayblog.com. This requires an entire database change, all links to be re-adjusted and images to be re-located to a brand new server with a new location. So heres a screenshot of what the splash page can look like and remember that you can modify what the page displays as this is just a sample.
Its a great plugin to use for those of you who want to make minor changes and now you can do so without it horribly messing up. The plugin actually does a really good job and all you have to do to activate the splash page is go into your PLUGINS tab and Activate the plugin.
Anyway, let me know what you guys think of the concept of this plugin and I will definitely give all of you a heads up before I move to the new server. Also, I doubt that you will have to update your RSS readers considering the fact that I use feedburner. Anyway, hopefully you guys will enjoy the new EnkayBlog which should be ready by the end of this week! Have a great 4th of July to everyone who is celebrating!
Stephen Fung’s Contest
So I just wanted to take a moment and mention a contest that is possibly still going on over at StephenFung’s blog where he is giving away an iPod nano and a Flip Flap. I believe the contest date was mentioned to end July 1st so hopefully we will see those results soon but I figured I’d still blog about it just for the fact that I feel that it has gone a little unnoticed plus even if this doesn’t count atleast he gets a link back 
I haven’t used this plugin, but I can definitely see how it would be useful. What they should do is make a plugin that when activated will display the blog as normal and any changes can only be seen by admin so that the maintenance message would not appear and the blog would continue to function as usual while you made your adjustments.
I installed it once but I don’t find this plugin very useful. To upgrade a blog, you enable this plugin, then just before you upgrade the code, per the instruction, you disable all plugins.
Now you can do this easily by clicking on the Disable All Plugins link. That means this plugin is also disabled, so should I turn it back on?
I prefer to update my design offline, using a local installation of WordPress.
The idea about Maintenance Mode was most likely taken from Drupal, but in Drupal, it works because it is not a module, but part of the feature of the CMS.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I haven’t tried using a local installation of Wordpress to update my design as I usually have a test blog that I have set up that I use for that. I’m going to have to give that a try.
I can see the plugin being useful in some situations, but I think it’s pretty limited.
As per Hendry comments, I prefer to make changes to my blog using a local copy I have running at home, and then upload the changes to my webhost when they’re done.
Yeah, I agree with you on that. I just use the plug-in when I am messing around with the database after creating a back up so that things don’t go hay wire but I know what you mean by the limited concept as it really doesnt have any long term uses.