Hello Alan,

Congratulations on your first guest article on our site. I hope we’ll see them more in the future. Btw. Great site you have.

Hi Ben,

Glad you brought that up, because its something I tried. After some digging around this feature only restricts access to developer functions and not the site its self. (such as the log, or inline path hints)

This allows only your IP to visit the site.

Alan

Oddest problem. So your method has worked like a charm, except for the IP address I happen to be using at the moment (someone else’s home). Here, I get an error 503 while at every other IP I have allowed in, it has worked.

This is what was listed as the description for the IP address here:
IP Information: 72.171.0.144
ISP: HUGHES NETWORK SYSTEMS
Organization: HUGHES NETWORK SYSTEMS
Connection: Broadband
Proxy: Suspected Network Sharing Device
City:
Region:
Country: United States united states flag

Did you have any idea what could be the source of the problem? This website also seems to say that this computer is just outside of Wichita Kansas, when I am actually in northern Maryland. Perhaps this could cause some sort of problem?

best,
Dan

Ok I found my problem – For this to work you will first need to enable Magentos Maintenance Mode

Create a blank file and name it maintenance.flag and place the file into your root folder.

The template for Maintenance Mode can be found: – errors/default/503.phtml

Thank You

Thanks for the article! Any way this can be used in a multi-store setup? Like preventing users to access domainA.com but letting them into domainB.com.

I ran into the same problem as LZ did.
But it was very easy to solve this issue:

1. register for an account at dyndns.org (or some similar service) if you don’t have an account already
2. if your router supports updating the dyndns.org service, configure your router for updating dyndns.org. Otherwise you have to install a client software which updates dyndns.org even if your ip has been changed
3. Modify your index.php as described above by Alan
4. Add the followig line (replace example.dyndns.org with your dynamic dns address)

$myip = gethostbyname('example.dyndns.org');

between

$ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];

and

$allowed = array('1.1.1.1','2.2.2.2'); // these are the IP's that are allowed to view the site.

5. Modify the line

if (file_exists($maintenanceFile) && !in_array($ip, $allowed)) { 

to

if (file_exists($maintenanceFile) && !in_array($ip, $myip, $allowed)) { 

6. That’s it!

Now the index.php looks for the IP address which is assigned to your dynamic dns address (in this example example.dyndns.org). So you will always have access from your network when maintenance mode is enabled.

Changing the directoryIndex isn’t a good idea. That will only stop people hitting your site with the base domain (www.mysite.com).

Any deeper indexed or bookmarked url will either still work if it has /index.php/ in the url or will return a 404 if not.

anyone hitting any bookmarked/indexed url which doesn’t explicitly contain

This just doesn’t want to work for me… I’ve followed all the instructions and can’t seem to make it work.

I’ve included my IP addresses, cleared all my caches, even tried to wrap the code in ” “, and yet I am still unable to access my site with the maintenance.flag file uploaded into my root folder.

Does anyone else have any other solutions or suggestions on where I can find out the answer to this problem. I am running version 1.4.

Thanks folks, this is a little above my skill level and is proving to be a daunting task trying to trouble shoot what is going wrong.

The service is unavailable.

message dispaly ..

i did it some changes in \zend\cache\backend\file.php

and create tmp folder in root dir. but its not solve .. please help any buddy…

my magento site running perfectly but i will try to install magnento extentsion and install it. then after i click return to admin .. then i got this message…

plz help me…

Hi,

Is there any way to put only front side in maintenance and once user login to admin panel he can view the front?

I am using magento community ver 1.7.0.0

I have tired to search a lot but not found any solution for this.

Thanks for this tutorial this was very useful. As I looked into the Maintenance Mode but I couldn’t find it in the Magneto at all. Many thanks.

perfectly working with 1.7.0.2
thank you very much

Still no luck with this code in 1.7.0.2
I copied exactly as written and get;

PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘;’, expecting T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM on line 63

any clue?

Updated Code

$mageFilename = MAGENTO_ROOT . ‘/app/Mage.php’;
$maintenanceFile = ‘maintenance.flag’;
// MAINTENANCE MODE: FIRST PLACE EMPTY FILE IN ROOT CALLED maintenance.flag
// WHEN NOT IN MAINTENANCE MODE CHANGE maintenance.flag to maintenance.flag.txt
// FOR MAINTENANCE MODE: UNCOMMENT THE FOLLOWING 2 LINES STARTING LINES WITH // (REPLACE COMMENTS TO TURN MODE OFF)
$ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
$allowed = array(‘ENTER YOU IP HERE”); // IP ADDRESS ALLOWED TO VIEW THE SITE
if (!file_exists($mageFilename)) {
if (is_dir(‘downloader’)) {
header(“Location: downloader”);
} else {
echo $mageFilename.” was not found”;
}
exit;
}
// FOR MAGENTO MAINTENACE MODE: UNCOMMENT NEXT LINE BY REMOVING // AND THEN COMMENT LINE AFTER WITH // (REVERSE COMMENTS TO TURN MODE BACK ON)
if (file_exists($maintenanceFile) && !in_array($ip, $allowed)) {
//if (file_exists($maintenanceFile)) {
    require( dirname(__FILE__) . ‘/errors/503.php’);
    exit;
}