How to Enable Maintenance Mode for WooCommerce Shop Pages

Want to put your WooCommerce store in maintenance mode? Maintenance mode allows you to show a notification to users instead of a broken website during a redesign or website maintenance.

It also means you can hide your new WooCommerce store from visitors while you safely perform any maintenance tasks.

So in this article, we’ll show you how to put WooCommerce in maintenance mode. That way, you can keep your WooCommertce shop page private while you’re working on it behind the scenes.

What Is Maintenance Mode?

Maintenance mode is a page you add to your WordPress website that tells users your site is down for maintenance and will be back soon.

Putting your site into maintenance mode, also known as wp maintenance mode, returns a 503 header code that tells Google and other search engines your site is down temporarily. This ensures your site’s reputation and SEO aren’t negatively affected.

Typically, a maintenance mode page includes a friendly message to let visitors know that your site is temporarily unavailable. You can also include a countdown timer to let users know when your site will be available again and include an email optin form so you can message users directly when your shop is live.

When to Enable Maintenance Mode For WooCommerce

Many people are unsure of what the difference is between a coming soon page and maintenance mode.

The best time to enable maintenance mode for your new WooCommerce store is when you’re making minor changes or updates to your site. 

On the other hand, if you’re creating a brand new website, you can use a WooCommerce coming soon page so search engines can index it before it launches. 

Here are some common scenarios that you would enable maintenance mode for:

Adding WooCommerce to Your Existing eCommerce Site

If you’re adding a new online store section to your WordPress site, you’ll want to test it before making it viewable to anyone else. Putting your WooCommerce shop pages in maintenance mode will enable you to do that.

Instead of seeing a site clearly under construction, users will see a friendly notice.

Fixing Online Store Errors

Something might have gone wrong with your store, so you need to quickly put WooCommerce in maintenance mode to give you time to fix the issues without getting any penalties from Google.

If you want to know how to add Google Analytics to WordPress with a plugin or code snippet to track your site, check out this guide.

Changing WordPress Themes and Updating Plugins

If you want to change your WordPress theme without breaking your site, it’s best to put your site into maintenance mode. 

You should also put your website into temporary maintenance mode when you’re updating WordPress plugins, just in case anything goes wrong and your site breaks.

Putting your WooCommerce store in maintenance mode improves the overall user experience of your site. Plus, it helps you avoid misplaced orders while you work on perfecting your website.

Let’s now learn how to put WooCommerce in maintenance mode in this step by step tutorial.

How to Put WooCommerce in Maintenance Mode

Follow the steps below to learn how to hide your WooCommerce shop page.

1. Install SeedProd

The first step to putting WooCommerce in maintenance mode is to install a maintenance mode plugin. 

SeedProd is the best WordPress drag and drop landing page builder with coming soon mode and maintenance mode functionality. This allows you to enable maintenance mode in WordPress.

Not only that, but with SeedProd, you can also enable a WooCommerce coming soon page and create high-converting landing pages for your site. So, you don’t need multiple maintenance plugins; you can do all 3 tasks with SeedProd.

Check out these other awesome features of SeedProd:

• Pre-built templates for Maintenance Mode, WooCommerce Coming Soon, and a variety of landing pages
• Password protect your site while under development
• Drag and drop page builder with live preview
• Premium integrations with popular email marketing services
• Add social media buttons, optin forms, and contact forms to grow your email subscribers.
• WooCommerce integration with add to cart buttons, custom checkout, and shopping cart pages
• Login page mode to customize your shop’s login experience.
• And much more

So, begin by clicking here to get started with SeedProd and downloading the plugin.

Then, you can follow this step-by-step guide to install a WordPress plugin.

After installing and activating the plugin, click the SeedProd icon in your WordPress admin area. This will take you to the SeedProd landing page builder dashboard. 

Click the Set up a Maintenance Mode Page button. This will allow you to add new maintenance mode pages and hide your WooCommerce shop page from the public.

2. Design Your Maintenance Mode Page

After clicking the Set up a Maintenance Mode Page button, you can choose one of SeedProd’s many templates. This will help you design a beautiful WooCommerce maintenance mode page easily.

Alternatively, you can choose a blank template to start from scratch. 

Hover over any maintenance template you like and click on the checkmark icon to use it. 

Now you can design your WooCommerce maintenance mode page using SeedProd’s visual drag and drop builder.

On the right side of the screen, you can see your template. And on the left side, you can see different blocks and sections that you can add to your maintenance mode page.

Simply drag any of the blocks over to your template and drop them in place. 

For example, we added a countdown timer in this maintenance mode page by dragging it over to the template. Then, click on the block to choose the style, set the date and time, and to set other customization options.

Other blocks you can add include:

• Image
• Video
• Text
• Button
• Contact Form
• Email Optin Form
• Social Profiles
• Add to Cart Button
• Popular Products
• And Much More

You can also click any pre-made sections, like FAQ, Features, or Call to Action, to add them to your maintenance mode page. 

You can also change the background image of the template, the colors, fonts, custom CSS, and more by clicking the gear icon (Global Settings page) in the bottom left corner of the SeedProd builder. 

Once you’ve added all of the elements you need to your maintenance mode page and it’s looking great, don’t forget to hit the Save button in the top right corner.

3. How to Enable Maintenance Mode Just for Your WooCommerce Store

Now click on the Page Settings tab at the top of the screen. Under Page Settings, click on Access Controls.

Scroll down the page to select the Include URLs option. After selecting Include URLs, you’ll see a blank field right below it. 

Copy the URL of your published password-protected WooCommerce store and paste it in the given blank field.

If this is a new WooCommerce installation, you’ll want to include the following default pages. Just replace “example.com” with your own domain:

• https://example.com/shop
• https://example.com/cart
• https://example.com/checkout
• https://example.com/my-account

If you’ve already added products to your store, you should add the following URLs as well:

• https://example.com/product/*
• https://example.com/product-category/*
• https://example.com/product-tag/*

The asterisk on the end of the URL is a wildcard that will include any URL starting with that pattern.

When you publish your maintenance page, SeedProd will hide the WooCommerce shop pages you added.

So, let’s go ahead and publish your WooCommerce maintenance mode page.

4. Publish Your Maintenance Mode Page

To make your WooCommerce maintenance mode page live, click on the dropdown arrow next to the Save button and then click on Publish.

SeedProd will notify you that your maintenance page has been published. To see what it looks like, click the See Live Page button.

Here’s an example of what our WooCommerce maintenance mode page looks like live on the front end of our website:

Of course, your maintenance mode page will likely look different than this, thanks to all of SeedProd’s customization options. But, this is what your visitors will see when they land on your WooCommerce shop page. 

The final step is to activate the maintenance mode page. To do this, go to SeedProd » Pages from your WordPress admin area, and find the maintenance mode section.

Then click the Inactive toggle to make it Active.

You’ve now put WooCommerce in maintenance mode and disabled your shop page.

Now you can log in to the backend and continue working on the store until it’s ready to go live again. And you can do that while you hide your WooCommerce shop page from the public.

How Do I Turn Off WooCommerce Maintenance Mode?

When you’re done with maintenance, you can turn off WordPress maintenance mode to let shoppers view your WooCommerce pages again. 

If you want to turn off maintenance mode for WooCommerce. Just go back to SeedProd » Pages from your WordPress dashboard. Under the Maintenance Mode option, simply click the toggle from Active to Inactive.

That’s it! Now your visitors will be able to view the live version of your WooCommerce store again.

WooCommerce Maintenance Mode FAQ

How do I password protect WooCommerce?

You can password protect WooCommerce pages easily with SeedProd. Just follow step 3 above.

Can I disable WooCommerce?

You can safely disable WooCommerce, or you can remove the pages from your shop menu. But if users can access the pages via the URL or Google Results, they can still purchase. You can avoid this by either disabling the WooCommerce plugin or adding a store notice that your shop isn’t open, and disabling all payment methods.

How do I disable WooCommerce plugin?

Navigate to Plugins from your WordPress dashboard, where you’ll find a list of installed plugins. Then find the plugin you want to disable and click Deactivate. Once you click Deactivate, WordPress will deactivate the plugin.

You’ve now learned how to put your WooCommerce shop in maintenance mode so you can work on your shop pages in private without disrupting your site visitors.

Get started with SeedProd today to create your very own maintenance mode page.

We hope this article was helpful to you! You should also check out our roundup of the best WooCommerce plugins to grow your store.

If you want to read helpful content, do follow us on Facebook and Twitter.