About this plugin
MSBD Maintenance Mode is a lightweight maintenance mode plugin for WordPress. When active, the plugin replaces the public frontend template with a simple maintenance page for logged-out visitors and lower-role logged-in users.
Administrators can continue browsing the real website normally while maintenance mode is active.
Main features
- Shows a maintenance page to visitors and non-admin logged-in users.
- Allows site administrators to bypass maintenance mode with the manage_options capability.
- Allows network administrators and super admins to bypass maintenance mode on WordPress multisite.
- Supports a Media Library logo.
- Supports a direct HTTP/HTTPS logo URL.
- Provides required maintenance badge and title fields plus an optional message field.
- Allows only <strong>, <i>, <em>, and <br> formatting in the maintenance message.
- Uses clean template and stylesheet override paths for theme developers.
- Excludes admin, login, AJAX, cron, REST API, WP-CLI, and Customizer preview requests.
- Includes WordPress nonce verification and capability checks for settings forms.
- Sanitizes saved settings and escapes template/admin output.
- Includes internationalization support with the msbd-maintenance-mode text domain and /languages domain path.
Multisite support
On WordPress multisite:
- Network Admin > MSBD Maintenance manages network-level default settings from a top-level network admin menu.
- Each subsite admin can use the top-level MSBD Maintenance menu to manage that subsite’s own settings.
- Subsite settings override network defaults after they are saved.
Request exclusions
The plugin does not replace these request types:
- WordPress admin area
- Login and registration pages
- AJAX requests
- Cron requests
- REST API requests
- WP-CLI requests
- Customizer preview requests
Template customization
Theme developers can override the public maintenance page without editing the plugin by adding either or both files to the active theme or child theme:
css
Template lookup priority is:
- Child theme: msbd-maintenance-mode/main.php
- Parent theme: msbd-maintenance-mode/main.php
- Plugin fallback: wp-content/plugins/msbd-maintenance-mode/tpl/main.php
Stylesheet lookup priority is:
- Child theme: msbd-maintenance-mode/style.css
- Parent theme: msbd-maintenance-mode/style.css
- Plugin fallback: wp-content/plugins/msbd-maintenance-mode/assets/css/maintenance.css
The selected stylesheet is loaded with wp_enqueue_style(). The default plugin template sends a 503 Service Unavailable response, adds no-cache headers, and outputs a noindex meta tag.
Privacy
The plugin does not collect, store, or transmit personal data. It does not connect to external services.
If an administrator enters an external logo URL, visitors’ browsers may request that image from the external URL provider.