Knowband Blog | Ecommerce Modules

Magento Custom Maintenance Page Extension – User Manual

Joe Parker

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:

1.2 Features of the Magento Custom Maintenance Page Extension:

1.3 The Customer Benefits:

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:

3. Extension Interfaces

There are two interfaces in this extension. Each interface has a different functionality according to its use. These interfaces are:

  1. Admin Panel Interface (Only be accessible by admin/store owner)
  2. 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:

  1. General Settings
  2. Look and Feel
  3. 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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