Introduction of Magento Custom Maintenance Page Extension
1. Introduction
The Magento custom maintenance page module adds a feature into the website which is useful when the store owner puts the website under maintenance. By default, Magento shows a normal page to the site users/customers that “Service Temporary Unavailable” which doesn’t put any impact on the front-end users. To overcome this Knowband Magento website maintenance extension, this Magento extension allows the store admin to design a custom page to show during “site maintenance”. This is not the limit of this Magento maintenance page extension, the online retailers have also added some more features which certainly reduce overhead from the admin and allow him/her to do some more with the website.
This Magento custom maintenance page module is fully customizable where the store admin can easily customize the maintenance page as per desires.
1.1 The Benefit of the Magento Store Merchant:
- Magento custom maintenance page allows the e-merchant to enable/disable maintenance mode on the website.
- The online retailers can set the fix time period of the website maintenance mode.
- The Magento maintenance mode extension gives an opportunity to the online store owner to change the look and feel of the maintenance page by changing colors easily with color picker tool, no technical knowledge is required.
- The Magento maintenance page extension enables the store admin to add the content of the maintenance page as per desires.
- This Magento maintenance page extension allows the admin to enable/disable the notification option. When admin enables the module, the customer to get mail alert when the website is active again.
- The Admin can customize the email template as per desires.
- With the help of this Magento website maintenance extension, the store admin can completely customize maintenance page by changing the background image, text color, text size and margin from the top or left.
- The Magento maintenance page module enables the e-merchant to easily customize the cut down settings of the maintenance page.
- The Store admin can easily upload the logo of the website with only a button click.
1.2 Features of the Magento Custom Maintenance Page Extension:
- The Visitors have no access to website
- Countdown timer.
- This Magento extension provided by Knowband works for multiple stores.
- It shows the custom message.
- Customized page title
- Notification Box for Users
- Notify customers when the website is back from maintenance mode.
1.3 The Customer Benefits:
- The customers can timely and easy access to the website.
- The customer gets the notification when the website is live.
2. Installation
After purchasing the Magento extension, you will get the following files as listed below:
1. magentocustommaintenancepage.zip (contains source code of the extension)
2. User Manual
Follow the below steps to install the Magento website maintenance page extension:
1.Unzip the magentocustommaintenancepage.zip file.
2. Copy all the files and folders of unzipped folder into your store root directory.
3. After copying all the files and folders, clear the cache.
4. Open any page of your store. Magento will install the module at the time of loading any page.
5. After installing, please login into your admin panel and go to the below menu:
- System > Configuration > Advanced
- Here you will see that ” Vss_Storemaintenance” module is listed.
3. Extension Interfaces
There are two interfaces in this extension. Each interface has a different functionality according to its use. These interfaces are:
- Admin Panel Interface (Only be accessible by admin/store owner)
- Front End Interface (accessible to front end user)
Each interface has been described in separate section.
4. Admin Panel Interface
This part of the Magento custom maintenance page extension is for admin user, through which the admin can configure the settings. After installing the extension, Custom Maintenance Page menu option will be visible under System > Knowband Extensions menu in the menu bar as shown in the below screen:
On clicking the above menu, admin panel interface of the Magento maintenance page extension will open.
There are three tabs in the admin panel through which the store admin will be able to manage the functionality of the Magento custom maintenance page extension. These are listed below:
- General Settings
- Look and Feel
- Countdown Settings
4.1 General Settings
This tab will be opened by default when you click on the menu. General Settings tab has following options:
1. Enable/Disable
This is an on/off switch. The Store admin will have the option to Enable/Disable the extension. If enabled, then the website will go under maintenance and show custom maintenance page to the end users. (Certainly this action depends on some other factors/parameters of this extension like Activation/Deactivation date, etc.)
2. Activation Date & Time
This is a date picker which allows admin to select any future date to schedule site maintenance activation.
3. Deactivation Date & Time
This is a date picker which allows admin to select date greater than Activate Date & Time value to schedule site maintenance deactivation.
4. Top Content
This is a text editor which allows the store admin to provide some text to show on custom maintenance page at the top section.
5. Bottom Content
This is a text editor which allows the e-merchant to provide some text to show on custom maintenance page at the bottom section.
6. Notify Me
This is an On/Off switch. The admin will be able to enable/disable this feature. If enabled, customers will be able to subscribe their email ids on custom maintenance page to get mail notification when site will come out of maintenance.
7. Email Notification Content
This is a text editor which allows admin to provide email notification content to send to subscribers.
*Note: There is tool-tip for each label and default values for settings.
*Note: You have to make sure that Magento CRON process is running on your server to send notification to your customers when site comes out of maintenance. Through a secure shell (SSH), you can check this with:
crontab -l
This will list the current CRON jobs that the server will run. You should see something like:
*/15 * * * * /home/user/public_html/magento/cron.sh
If you do not see a line that, use:
crontab -e
And add the following line in crontab:
*/15 * * * * /home/user/public_html/magento/cron.sh
Below is the screen shot of the this tab :
4.2 Look and Feel
This tab contains the setting options to manage look and feel of the custom maintenance page of the store. You can find them below:
1.Background Image
This is the option through which the Magento store admin can upload an image which will be shown on the custom maintenance page to let the front-end users know that site is under maintenance.
2.Website Logo
This is the option through which the e-merchant can decide to show or hide the logo on the custom maintenance page.
3.Background Page Color
This is the option through which the admin can decide the background color of the custom maintenance page.
4.Background Block Color
This is the option through which the online retailers can decide the background color of the block shown on the custom maintenance page with the top and bottom content as provided in General Settings section.
5.Background Block Opacity
This is the option through which the eCommerce admin can decide the transparency of the block shown on the custom maintenance page with the Top and Bottom content as provided in General Settings section.
6.Text Color
This is the option through which the admin can decide the text color of the custom maintenance page.
7.Text Size
This is the option through which the online retailers can decide the text size of the custom maintenance page.
8.Margin from Top
This is the option through which the merchant can decide the margin from the top to display block on the custom maintenance page.
9.Margin from Left
This is the option through which the store owner can decide the margin from the left to display block on the custom maintenance page.
10.Background Block Width
This is the option through which the admin can decide the width of the block shown on the custom maintenance page. *Note: There is tool-tip for each label and default values for settings.
Below is the screen shot of the this tab :
4.3 Countdown Settings
1.Countdown Timer Size
This is the option through which the store admin can decide the size of timer to be shown on the custom maintenance page. This option will be having following values – Default (Middle), Small, Extra Small, Large.
2.Countdown Timer Background Color
This is the option through which the online merchant can decide the background color of the countdown timer to be shown on the custom maintenance page.
3.Countdown Timer Label Color
This is the option through which the admin can decide the label color of the countdown timer to be shown on the custom maintenance page.
4.Countdown Timer Margin from Top
This is the option through which the store admin can decide the top margin of the countdown timer to be shown on the custom maintenance page.
5.Countdown Timer Margin from Left
This is the option through which the merchant can decide the left margin of the countdown timer to be shown on the custom maintenance page.
Note – There is tool-tip for each label and default values for settings.
Below is the screen shot of the this tab :
5. Front End Interface
Front End Interface will show the custom maintenance page with configured settings set through the admin panel of this Magento custom maintenance page extension. You can find screenshot below –
You can see that a “Notify Me” block with an input box and “Subscribe” button is displayed in the above screenshot. This box appears only if admin has enabled the “Notify Me” option through the admin panel of this Magento maintenance mode extension (In General Settings tab). Front end users are able to subscribe themselves through this block by providing their email addresses.
*Note: You have to make sure that Magento CRON process is running on your server to send notification to your customers when site comes out of maintenance. Through a secure shell (SSH), you can check this with:
crontab -l
This will list the current CRON jobs that the server will run. You should see something like:
*/15 * * * * /home/user/public_html/magento/cron.sh
If you do not see a line that, use:
crontab -e
And add the following line in crontab:
*/15 * * * * /home/user/public_html/magento/cron.sh
You can try Knowband’s Magento custom maintenance page extension for on your Magento store. KnowBand’s Magento maintenance mode module helps give the better user experience to your eCommerce customer.
Module Link: https://www.knowband.com/magento-custom-maintenance-page
Please contact us at support@knowband.com for any query or custom change request as per your business requirement
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