Maintenance mode is useful when you need to perform scheduled maintenance that requires stopping your customers from placing orders via your Prospect eCommerce site. The page selected for maintenance mode is also what customers will see if they use your website when Prospect run's database maintenance during off-peak hours.
Prerequisites
You'll need to have a Prospect eCommerce site
You'll need to have a maintenance page designed for this purpose
When creating this page, you need to consider that some components of the eCommerce may not function like normal. For example, the Product Groups plugin may not be functioning so this should not be used on your maintenance page
When you put your site into maintenance mode the system caches your page on our server which is separate from yours and is served from there
How to put your website into Maintenance Mode
Step 1: Navigate to Site Properties
To place your site into maintenance mode,you need to go to the Error Pages section. To do this go to “Home” on the ribbon bar, then “Site Properties”.
Step 2: Select Error Pages
Then, click "Error Pages".
Step 3: Set Time and Date for Maintenance Page
To trigger the maintenance page to show for a set time, input this into the 'Next Maintenance section. When the date set comes around, we will show the maintenance page for whoever tries to access your website.
This is a useful tool if you are working on some large updates to the website and don't wish for your Customers to be able to access the site.
Step 4: Out of Maintenance Mode
To take your site out of maintenance mode, simply clear the date and time in the 'Next Maintenance' field.
How to edit the Maintenance Page
You can fully customise and edit the page that shows when the site is in maintenance mode, as you can for all pages on the site. It is always recommend to include details like how to contact your Customer Services or why the Website is in maintenance mode so then Customers are aware of why they can't browser the site.
Step 1: Create the maintenance page
You will need to already have a page ready to use for maintenance mode. If you don't have this you can easily create it by navigating to the page creation. Go to the Site Map in the ribbon menu and select New Page.
Step 2: Add the page to the maintenance display
Navigate to the Error Pages within Site Properties.
Click the blue link in the 'Maintenance Page' input and select the page you wish to use.
Once you have added your new page for maintenance mode, don't forget to press Save!