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Create a temporary "Under Construction" page

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  • Applies to: All Services
    • Difficulty: Easy
    • Time Needed: 7
    • Tools Required: FTP or SSH

Overview

Having an "Under Construction" page for your website can be useful in a variety of cases. The main goal of such a page is to hide your usual website while it is in an undesirable state.

  • Provide a simple landing page during the testing phase of your initial development.
  • Prevent hacked content from being accessed while making security updates.
  • Display basic site information during renovations.
  • Keep your site up even when your more advanced pages are experiencing technical difficulties.

Instructions

    1. Open a plain-text or HTML editor, and create an 'under_construction.html' with the code:
<!DOCTYPE>
<html>
<head>
<title>Under Construction</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>This page is under construction. Please come back soon!</p>
</body>
</html>
    1. Upload the 'under_construction.html' to your document root for the domain. The correct directory is shown below - replace example.com with your own domain name:
  • Grid: /domains/example.com/html/
  • DV server: /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/, or just httpdocs through FTP
  • Create and upload a ".htaccess" file in the same location as the construction page with the code:
    • DirectoryIndex under_construction.html index.html index.php
    1. Once your site is complete and you want the normal home page to display, remove the DirectoryIndex line in your .htaccess file. If you are using index.html or index.php for your under construction page, you will need to delete or rename that file, and make sure your standard home page is named index.html or index.php.

    You've completed all the steps and should now have an "Under Construction" page visible to your website visitors.

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