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This may be a really obvious question to answer, but if we want to make changes to our home pages etc, we don't really want to be doing that in the ‘live’ system.  What’s the easiest way to temporarily close the system so we can perform some changes or ‘scheduled maintenance’ (ideally with a page that explains to the user when the system will be back online)

 

 

Off the top of my head, I’d make a page and menu that is for “maintenance” and make it available to everyone. Normally the menu would be at the bottom of the manage menus list, but during this window you move it up to the top so that it is everyone’s (except maybe leave an admin menu above it) main menu and they only have the maintenance message page. I used to do something similar with a prior LMS and built a “status indicator” that was embedded on the page and was based off my to do checklist so that as I moved forward it updated the meter real time and folks knew how close we were to being done. 

Hi @KTJD you could copy the page you want to update and leave the old version in place while you update the c copy. Once the updates are done, you can then switch out the old page for the new one…

If you use a “maintenance” page, you would need to change the menu visibility rules in order for users to see it, unless you add it to all your menus...really depends on how many menus/pages you are using.

Hi @KTJD you could copy the page you want to update and leave the old version in place while you update the c copy. Once the updates are done, you can then switch out the old page for the new one…

If you use a “maintenance” page, you would need to change the menu visibility rules in order for users to see it, unless you add it to all your menus...really depends on how many menus/pages you are using.

Definitely like this approach, @lrnlab if you needed to/wanted to do the swap out you wouldn’t need to change things, just the order of the menus. Use the trick to make a menu available to everyone (to have a page accessible that is not on a menu) and just move it to the top of the menu list during the window making it everyone’s menu automatically, then move it to the bottom normally to hide it. This menu would only have the maintenance page on it, only one page and one menu to manage. 

Still prefer your first approach better, unless you’re making changes to the rules for pages/menus I suppose and aren’t confident in them.

yes think the ‘copy’ of the home page is the best way for us.  Thanks both

HI @KTJD - I use the same approach as @lrnlab.  I duplicate any page I want to change and work on it in the background.  Then usually one evening when the site is nice and quiet, I swap them over.

Really like the maintenance page that @Bfarkas suggests though for times when this would not be practical (although I’m not clever enough to work out how to do a status indicator that is based off my to-do list!)

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