A Favorite WordPress Plugin
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I had a quick project this morning. Take a custom design and create a temp “under construction” landing page for a client. Carry Gear Solutions has been a client for a couple of years now and we are circling back around to redesigning their website after getting it up a running a couple of years ago on the WordPress platform.
I’ve been using the underConstruction plugin by Jeremy Massel with my WordPress sites for a while. It’s really easy to use. Install and take a look at the settings screen.
The admin panel is easy to navigate and understand.
- Choose between the temp page being on or off.
- Choose from a list of common status codes.
- Set the login access. If your site has a lot of contributing authors and you don’t want them to have access to the regular site during construction, lock them out easily using the “Restrict by Role” option.
- Add specific IPs to a whitelist and allow those visitors to see past the temp page to the regular site.
- Choose from three simple options for displaying a message on your landing page:
- Display the default under construction page / Simple and easy. Use the default design and message.
- Display the default under construction page but use custom text / Same simple design as above, but you create your own message.
- Display a custom page using your own HTML / My favorite part of this plugin. You can create a quick temp page by using your favorite HTML editor (ie. Dreamweaver) and copy and pasting the html into the provided window or just hand coding the design. You can be as simple or as creative as you want. Want to embed a video? Easy with a bit of HTML know-how or a quick google search to brush up on your html knowledge. Want to drop in a fun Flash file? Again, easy. Want your page to simply say “Hi” in a huge font size? Do it, because you can.
As you can see, the plugin is really easy to use and the best thing is that if you’re logged in as admin and you’re working on editing your regular site behind your really fun temp page, you can! You see the regular site while you’re logged in while everyone else is seeing the temp page. It’s a great plugin to install on every WordPress site you do and changing the text between an “under construction” and “undergoing maintenance” message is easy and quick and makes keeping the plugin on your site a great idea. Thanks Jeremy! Good work.