Tag Archives: Maintenance

Put Your Website in Maintenance Mode With .htaccess

Sep 25, 2009 by Matt | Posted in Hosting 7 Comments

Sooner or later you’ll probably run into a case where you need to put up a “maintenance mode” page while working on the site (e.g. while moving a site to a different server). What’s the best way of doing that? First you create a small, static HTML page that will appear to your visitors, then you put this at the top of your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/berightback\.html$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.org/berightback.html [R=307,L]

If you still need to be able to access the live site while you perform the maintenance, you can add a condition permitting requests from your IP address. This line should be placed after the RewriteBase / line:

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^00\.000\.000\.000

Be sure to replace the zeros in 00\.000\.000\.000 with the digits from your own IP address, which you can find by visiting WhatIsMyIP.com.

Today’s Lesson: Maintain and Protect Your Blogging Workstation

Jul 8, 2008 by Matt | Posted in General 4 Comments

A couple days ago, I missed a day blogging because I had to remove malware from a computer (not mine). Though it wasn’t the computer I use for my blogging, the main idea still stands: Maintain your computer, and take care to avoid having harm come to it, or you could spend a day (or a week) dealing with an issue.

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen the epic saga unfold: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12.

The malware that invaded the Dell laptop, which is mainly used by my parents, though my younger brother used it that day, is known as “VirusWebProtect2008.” It’s one of those “Smitfraud” faux antivirus software packages that installs itself via a compromised website, causes mayhem, and trys to sell you “antivirus software” that will supposedly remove the virus. Essentially it

Continue reading →

Start of Year Maintenance

Dec 26, 2007 by Matt | Posted in Blogging No Comments

It’s almost 2008. Too bad, I like the sound of “2007.”

When the new year starts, you’ve got some work to do. You need to clean-up your blog, fix things that have broken over the year, and get ready for another year of blogging.

  • Change the dates on your copyright notice.
  • Go through old posts. Look for dead links, broken images, and other things that may need a quick update. While you’re at it, keep an eye out for posts you could expand upon.
  • Check browser compatibility. As you’ve updated things in your template, you may have made your blog look horrible in certain browsers.
  • Evaluate your design. How long has it been since your last redesign? How is the current one holding up? Is there anything that needs a little tweaking?
  • Publish a “Best of” post. Highlight your best posts of the last year.
  • Update things that have changed. Does your about page say something like “I have been blogging for two years?” You’d better update that!
  • What have you been putting off?

Those are my suggestions. I’m sure you can find plenty more things to fix. Feel free to share your plans in the comments.