Simple Maintenance Redirect

FAQ

Can I customize the maintenance page?

Yes! Just create a page like you would normally and the plugin will automatically hide the header and footer so that your navigation bar and page styling is not visible. If you want to further customize the appearance of the page such as the background color, you can use CSS like you would any other page. A maintenance-mode class has been added to the body element for easier targeting. CSS can easily be added in your customizer.

What redirect status code should I use?

302 (Temporary Redirect) is the default and works fine for quick redirects. 307 behaves the same as 302 but explicitly preserves the original request method, which matters for some form submissions or API calls. 503 (Service Unavailable) is recommended if this is genuine maintenance downtime, since it signals to search engines that the redirect is temporary and shouldn’t be indexed as permanent — this helps preserve your SEO rankings during longer maintenance windows.

Why does the redirect sometimes stay after I disable maintenance mode?

If a redirect was cached by browsers or upstream caches (CDNs, reverse proxies) while maintenance mode was active, those caches can continue serving the redirect even after you’ve disabled it.

What we do now:

• The plugin sends no-cache headers alongside the redirect to avoid it being cached going forward.
• We also provide a JavaScript fallback (enqueued script) for rare situations where headers were already sent before the redirect could be emitted.

How to fix it for visitors who still see the redirect:

• Browser: Ask affected users to hard-refresh the page or clear their browser cache. On most browsers a hard refresh is Ctrl+F5 (Windows) or Cmd+Shift+R (macOS).
• CDN / Reverse Proxy: If you use Cloudflare, Fastly, Varnish, nginx proxy_cache, or another caching layer, purge the cache for the affected URL (or do a full purge if necessary). On Cloudflare you can purge a single URL from the dashboard or use their API.
• Server configs: Ensure no server-level rewrite or redirect (nginx/apache) has permanently redirected the route.

If the problem persists after clearing your browser cache and CDN, you can use the Clear Cache Everywhere plugin to flush all cache layers from your WordPress dashboard.

Why can’t I access wp-login.php while maintenance mode is on?

This plugin never redirects wp-login.php on its own — the redirect logic runs on template_redirect, which doesn’t fire for that file at all, so it’s unreachable by this plugin by design.

If you’re still being redirected away from your login page, one of these is almost always the cause:

• Browser or CDN cache: A previously cached redirect can keep being served even after you’ve made changes. Hard-refresh your browser (Ctrl+F5 / Cmd+Shift+R) in a fresh incognito window, and purge any CDN or reverse proxy cache (Cloudflare, Varnish, etc.) for that specific URL.
• A custom login URL: If you’re using a plugin or code snippet that changes your login page to a custom slug (e.g. /login/ instead of /wp-login.php), that custom page is a regular WordPress page or rewrite rule as far as this plugin is concerned, and can be redirected like any other page. Add it to the Omit Pages list in this plugin’s settings so it’s excluded.
• Another plugin or server-level redirect: Security plugins, caching plugins, or server rewrite rules (.htaccess, nginx config) can independently redirect login requests. Temporarily deactivate other plugins one at a time, or check your server’s rewrite rules, to isolate the source.

Where can I request features and get further support?

We recommend using our website support forum as the primary method for requesting features and getting help. You can also reach out via our Discord support server or the WordPress.org support forum, but please note that WordPress.org doesn’t always notify us of new posts, so it’s not ideal for time-sensitive issues.