How can I turn off my site temporarily ?

[cerbere]

When doing maintenance or modifications to my site,
I'd like to lock it up for a short period (1-4 hours), maybe
with a page that says "Back at 16:00 h GMT" and
allows me to enter a password so I can do my testing.

This is easily done in the public_html/index.htm page,
but how can I lock the whole site without having to edit
every page ?

In other words, I want to flip a SINGLE switch that allows
only me to access any site page.

Any suggestions ?

[Sohail]

Well using the options in the cPanel you can password-protect directories.

[freecrm]

Check out .htaccess and .htpasswd files that can control access.

You only have to change one file (.htaccess)

[Sohail]

Yeah you could do that too..

[Sohail]

Yeah you could do that too..

[dickey]

Can you give example of how to do that using .htaccess as I wanted to ask the same question.

[cerbere]

Yes freecrm, can you please give some details on how
to lock the site using .htaccess ? Is that configuration
file used by Apache ?

[freecrm]

Yes freecrm, can you please give some details on how
to lock the site using .htaccess ? Is that configuration
file used by Apache ?

I'll post a bit later and cover this - I'm just doing a bit of complex dev work that needs my attention....

[cerbere]

After some research on Google with "Apache" and
"htaccess" as keywords, I tried to use cPanel to enforce
user/password access to my site. When I impose that
on my public_html directory, here is what happens :

- First access after firing up my browser : I get the
user/password pop-up window; after entering the user
and pass I specified to cPanel, I get an "Internal server
error" page.

- Subsequent accesses (i.e. hitting "refresh") : no more
user/password dialog, only the "Internal server error"
page.

I FEEL I am close to doing what I want (see my opening
message), but I am still doing something wrong... :>(

[xmakina]

It's more of a hack than a fix, but assuming you have an include(header.php) or similar throughout your site, you could add in a line to the header that reads an entry in the database (SELECT active FROM website) and

if(active == false) //show Site Closed

It's just a thought until someone finds the proper fix.