CODEWITHSUNDEEP
.htaccesswebblock
stergosz
stergosz

Reputation: 5860

blocking my website from others

I would like to block my website and probably redirect them to a 404 page while i am updating it which can take some time.

Could a redirect to the 404 page everytime a user goes to my website work?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 131

Answers (4)

Sebastian P.R. Gingter
Sebastian P.R. Gingter

Reputation: 6085

That would work, but that would not only be wrong information (the page is not 'not found' - it's just currently being updated), but also mislead your users and crawlers. I would redirect them to a 'Update in progress' page and send this with the http status code 423 (LOCKED) to the client to provide a standard conform answer to exactly your scenario.

Upvotes: 0

JAB
JAB

Reputation: 21089

Here's a simpler idea: just make a new index page that's your original, except with the content replaced with a "site currently being updated; please come back later" sort of message. And then you'd redirect all hits to your site to that index page.

That's what many sites I've seen tend to do, at least. And it makes sense, at least to me. I mean, would you rather your users not know why the pages they want to access are no longer there, or that they know the reason is because the site is being updated? It's basically the same as a 404 page, just with the specific information of why the desired pages aren't there.

EDIT: It seems I'm basically talking about a 503 page, going by David's link and Roland's answer.

Upvotes: 0

David
David

Reputation: 218877

If it's just a temporary redirect during site-down maintenance then you probably don't want to use a 404 code. Take a look at the other codes available to you. For a scenario such as this, 307 (temporary redirect) would make a lot more sense. It would also be better if you have any SEO or rely on search crawlers at all, as they will remove results which now produce a 404 but are smart enough to keep results which temporarily produce a 307.

The redirect itself will work fine, just redirect all traffic to a static page. (Did you need advice on how to do that, or were you just looking for alternative options and viability? It's unclear from the question. If the former, I can't help much. It's been years since I've cracked open an .htaccess file.)

Basically, a 404 tells visitors: "This resource isn't here. Don't both asking again." Whereas a 307 tells visitors: "This resource is temporarily being handled by something else, but it hasn't really moved, please try again later."

Upvotes: 1

Roland Illig
Roland Illig

Reputation: 41625

You shouldn't do that. Status code 503 "Temporarily Unavailable" is much better in this case.

RewriteRule . - [R=503,L]

This might work.

Upvotes: 4

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