Feature Request: Maintenance mode
Addition to: Tools Menu
Details:
It would be nice to have this feature, to be able to put the forum into "Maintenance mode".
- Under the back end admin "forum tools", an additional applet called Maintenance.
- In this applet you can toggle the option Enable/Disable.
- When Enabled is selected, you have a text box where the admin can output a message to the community such as "The Forum is currently off-line for system testing".
This feature should allow the forum to run as normal, but only allow admins to view the forum content as normal. Any other member or guest would just see the maintenance message.
This feature would be especially useful when making forum changes or installing updates to the forum, to check all is well before allowing members start using it fully.
Once the admin is happy all is well, they can then disable the maintenance mode. Members would then be able to see the forum as normal.
Notes:
I know there are plugins for wordpress that allow you to put the entire wordpress site in "Maintenance mode", I actually use one already.
However, it would be far nicer and make more sense to have this option as a wpforo core option. That way rather than having the whole wordpress site/blog in maintenance, it could still run whilst just the forum is in maintenance mode.
This feature is available in standalone forums such as PHPBB3, MYBB and VBulletin. I've no idea if it is feasible for inclusion in wpforo core or if it would be a coding nightmare for you, just thought it would be so very useful.
P.s.
Please no suggestions that this is easily achievable by manually changing the forum permissions to "no access" for anyone other than admin. Just think about how time consuming an inefficient that would be with multiple groups and multiple forums.
Many thanks for your time.
Thank you!
Nice suggestion. We'll add this in our to-do list.
I would also like this feature.
In addition, I am using one of the wordpress type maitenance mode plugins, but I found that if I enable maintenance mode and a user is already logged in to the forum, then they can continue to use the forum and do not get the same maintenance mode message as a user that is a guest - this is obviously not good during plugin updates etc.
Is there a way to disable to forum during maintenance? I couldnt find any setting to take the forum off line, other than disabling the forum plugin, which seems a bit of a distructive way to do it.
Thanks in advance.
Simple solution to that is install a "force logout" plugin for wordpress, that's what I did. This adds an option to your "wordpress" user control menu. Select all users then choose logout from the drop-down list. Job done. Its also useful for other things, like just forcing out an individual user for whatever reason.
Still would love the wpforo option though.
@cmw14 Thanks. I have done things like that in the past, was just hoping for something a little more graceful. Likewise, I hope they implement this into the forum plugin its self.