Indexhibit^TM
Index + Exhibit

Hello

Have you given thought to possibly adding a mode where we can edit/update our sites without being live? A maintenance mode. Where visitors would see a message such as "updating, we'll be right back." All with a single click. Just a thought.

Thanks

Why? You have a reason for wanting this?

I don't really see a need for that.

Well, the reason for asking is simple. I would rather build on my server http://www.tagcab.com and still keep the site offline. This way I don't have to worry about moving the entire site from a test area of my domain and re-uploading images, etc...
But if you think there's no need, then that's ok. It was just an "idea".

I like this idea. Perhaps give a 503 error and a "performing maintenance" message while it's activated.

But, I don't see how you can do this via 'moving' your site around. You see...I don't understand how it could even work.

People can completely preview their pages before they are built as well.

I'm sure it's not necessary. I've seen a textpattern plugin that worked like this. When activated, a 503 error would come up with a "performing maintenance" page. If you were logged in as an admin to the backend, however, the site would recognize your cookie and you could view and change the site as normal. Everyone else got the 503 page.

This is useful if you want to build your site at your site root or whatever. Then it's not visible to the general public until you're ready to go live.

I think jaredh has a good point, this could be useful in some cases.

I'm not sure, like Vaska said, that it is needed as a default feature. Maybe one day a plugin could exist.

In the meanwhile, maybe just inserting an index.html in the same folder of your index.php would probably provide you with the mean to present a temporary "under construction page". Most servers are configured to show html files before php files. You can always access your index.php by implicitly writing it in the URL thus gaining a "preview" mode.

Investigative users will still be able to enter the index.php manually to access the site, but it is all public data in the end, isn't it?

That's a good suggestion, thanks.

It's not hard to add...but...it's the kind of feature people need 5% of the time? 1%? You see where I'm going with that...

That being said...Antoine and I have been talking about a 'hooks' system within Indexhibit. It exists now but we aren't using it much.

This is the kind of thing that could be an add-on...via a hook.

I didn't plan on doing a hooks system until the next big version...mostly because I haven't had time to wrap my head around it, but now I'm beginning to understand how it can be used.

i would certainly use that feature. i'm using the index.html way meanwhile.

I would use it too!

People from my hosting server say the order of displaying an index file is as follows:
index.html index.html.var Index.html index.shtml index.cfm index.php

But the method AntoineLafontaine proposed doesn't work.
It stopped working after I installed Indexhibit and now shows the default Indexhibit page.

Any suggestions?
Thanks

Maintenance mode is an important feature for any CMS, and I'm suprised indexhibit doesn't have it implemented.

Right now I'm setting up a site for a photographer, and as he is learning to make galleries, these test galleries are added to google search pages, which is bad as the site is far from being finished.