WordPress maintenance mode issue

ronald

When a WP site is set to maintenance mode via the Enhance Control Panel not even admins are allowed to log in to the back end. It's maintenance publicly and internally. Is this expected behavior?

JohnB

visiting YourSite.com/wp-login.php doesn't work?

You def can login via enhance though. Just click the login to admin button.

ronald

Clients are not able to visit wp-login or wp-admin as long as maintenance is enabled.

JohnB

ronald Sorry I misread the original question. THe maintence mode button does work that way. It creates a .maintence file which is also what wordpress does when updating.

https://kinsta.com/blog/wordpress-maintenance-mode/

You can't login when wordpress is in this mode. So to answer your question its expected behavior.

You can still use wp-cli I believe and obviously access any files and the database via the panel.

slimx

JohnB This is "NORMAL" behaviour. It's using wordpress's default maintenance mechanism.

JohnB

slimx Yes I know, I said its expected behaviour. My initial response I thought they were talking about something else lmao.

ronald

I must admit that even with 15 years of experience with WordPress I have never put WordPress into maintenance mode manually, I've always used a plugin. Using a plugin will allow administrators to log in during maintenance mode and work on the site.

Considering this is expected behaviour I question how useful this function is. WP is put into maintenance natively once a update is processing anyway, so it renders the Enhance maintenance function useless. The main reason to put a site in maintenance mode is to be able to work on the site while it's closed to the public.

Please keep in mind that most users would expect to be able to log in and run updates from the WP control panel. Enabling maintenance mode in Enhance does not allow that, the only option is manually via FTP/SSH or by SSH/WP-CLI.

JohnB

ronald o it renders the Enhance maintenance function useless.

There are usecases for it where you don't want traffic, for example if you're in the db making changes. You could just block all traffic but then they get an ugly browser page can't be displayed error instead of a maintence message.

That said it would be cool if enhance had a feature that basically redirects all traffic except currently logged into Enhance IP or whitelisted IPs to an html file where you can customize a maintence message. Completely independant from wordpress or any application.

Oldschool

I had a site for awhile with plugin conflicts that would occasionally cause the site to be stuck in maintenance mode after an update. I could always log in and erase the file but I found it much more convenient while on my mobile to log into the panel and flip the maintenance mode switch to bring it back up while away from a computer.