[solved] Admin site access when site is marked as "down"

[jakub7]

Hi all, I've been trying to search for solution of my problem for two days with no results so far.

I'm building a site. It works fine on localhost. Before I release it to public, I would like to test it on my web hosting server. Therefore I would appreciate if there was a possibility to access the site (the full site, not only the admin part) when I'm logged in as admin even when the "Enable Site Down Message" is activated. Is that possible with CMSMS 1.5.2?

I will appreciate any hint.
Cheers, Jakub

[jmcgin51]

I would also love this functionality, but I am not aware that it is possible now.  Hopefully one of the dev team can confirm one way or the other.

[Ziggywigged]

I think this function is geared more towards updating the actual CMS system without your users getting in a panic because something doesn't work all of a sudden.

What you could do is make a new 'Coming Soon/Work in Progress' page without any links and set it as the default. Then you can freely work on the other pages in the meantime.

[jakub7]

This workaround came to my mind but it's far from being neat.. I'm not a programmer but I imagine it should not be too difficult to check if user is an admin ald logged in (session active?) before redirecting to the Site down page.

[Videx]

I've always wondered why none of the upgrading instructions turn off the cms first. Is that what this button is supposed to be for? If so, it should be clearly labeled "Turn off the cms and display this message".

[jakub7]

This has nothing to do with upgrade or installation. My idea is following: Admin should have the option to browse his site even when for everybody else it will appear as "down/under construction/whatever"

[Dr.CSS]

If you put an index.html in the root, with or w/o anything in it you will see the site from inside the admin, click view site button, but others going to "thesite.com" will see the index.html...

The view site button goes to index.php...

[jmcgin51]

this is assuming that you have index.html set up first in your list of index files.  if you have index.php first, then the server will serve up index.php and ignore index.html

[jakub7]

I guess it can be temporarily covered by properly configured .htaccess file. It looks like a workaround that I can use. I will give it a try and let you know. I would still prefer if it was directly included in the CMS

[jakub7]

OK mark's solution works fine for testing puposes. I still have weird feeling cos all pages are in fact accessible if somebody/search engine knows the exact address.

Thank you all for your contribution!

[calguy1000]

and even now... with the sitedown message... if the google master searches your site because you submitted a sitemap... and tries to access 47 different URLS... and they get the same 'site down' content.... isn't that duplicate content?

I know that we return a 404 error code in this case, and display the content.  and that google interprets it correctly.

but... I'm just being sarcastic because of the numerous (stupid) threads about duplicate content lately.