WP Maintenance Mode (LightStart) Setup: Enable, Roles and Exclusions

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While you rework a WordPress site or swap themes, maintenance mode keeps visitors from seeing half-finished pages. This article explains how to set up the "WP Maintenance Mode" plugin.

As of October 2026, the plugin is published as "LightStart – Maintenance Mode, Coming Soon and Landing Page Builder" (developer: Themeisle). The plugin slug is still wp-maintenance-mode, and it has more than 400,000 active installations. The contents of this article were checked against the public information and source code for version 2.6.25.

What this plugin does

• Shows a maintenance page to visitors who aren't logged in, while administrators see the site as usual
• Builds the maintenance page as a regular WordPress page, chosen from templates
• Lets you specify which user roles may view the site and which URLs or IP addresses to exclude
• Adds components (modules) such as a countdown, an email signup form and a contact form
• Can also serve as a "Coming soon" page or a landing page

During maintenance it returns HTTP status 503 (temporarily unavailable) to visitors, and the Retry-After header tells them when to come back (3600 seconds by default, or the remaining time if you use the countdown). 503 is the status that tells search engines the outage is temporary.

Step 1: Install and activate

1. In the admin, open Plugins > Add New
2. Type wp-maintenance-mode or LightStart in the search box
3. For "LightStart – Maintenance Mode, Coming Soon and Landing Page Builder" (by Themeisle), click "Install Now" and then "Activate"

Once activated, "LightStart" is added to the admin's left menu. Right after a fresh install you are taken to the settings screen, where a wizard guides you through choosing a template for the maintenance page.

Step 2: Prepare the maintenance page

If you pick a template in the wizard, a page is created from that template and maintenance mode is turned on. You can also skip the wizard without choosing a template.

If you aren't ready to start work yet, skip the template choice in the wizard and turn maintenance mode on in Step 3 when you are ready, so the site isn't hidden at an unexpected moment.

To change the page later, use the "Design" tab on the "LightStart" settings screen.

To change the text shown (what the work is, when you expect to be back, and so on), edit the selected page in the block editor.

Step 3: General tab settings

The "General" tab on the settings screen has the following settings. Depending on the state of the translation, the labels may appear in English, so they are shown here in English.

After changing settings, click "Save settings".

Let your team see the site

If editors or others will log in to check the site, add their role (for example, Editor) to "Frontend Role". Administrators can see the site without any setting.

How to write exclusions (Exclude)

If a string you enter here is contained anywhere in the visitor's IP address or the requested URL, that request is left out of maintenance mode. By default the list contains feed, wp-login and login, so the login screen and feeds stay available.

feed
wp-login
login
contact      # Keep the contact page visible
203.0.113.10 # Office IP address

Anything after # is ignored as a comment. Because it is a partial match, note that writing 203.0.113.1 also excludes 203.0.113.10 and 203.0.113.123.

Be careful with “Bypass for Search Bots”

If you set it to "Yes", requests whose User-Agent (the name a browser reports) matches crawlers such as Google or Bing are shown the normal pages. Anyone can change their User-Agent, so if you don't want half-finished pages seen, it is safer to leave it at "No". For short maintenance, returning 503 is enough to tell search engines the outage is temporary.

Step 4: Check what visitors see

1. Set "Status" to "Activated" and save
2. Open the site in a browser where you aren't logged in (such as a private window) and confirm the maintenance page appears
3. Confirm that the normal pages appear in the browser where you are logged in as an administrator

You can also check the status code from the command line (replace the URL with your own site).

curl -sI https://example.com/ | grep -iE "^HTTP|^retry-after"

If you get 503 and Retry-After, maintenance mode is working.

If the display doesn’t change

The plugin's description recommends deactivating caching plugins while maintenance mode is in use. If normal pages remain in a caching plugin, the server cache or a CDN, visitors who aren't logged in may be served those cached pages. Clear caches before and after turning maintenance mode on or off.

Step 5: Turn maintenance mode off

When the work is done, set "Status" to "Deactivated" on the "LightStart" settings screen and save. In a browser where you aren't logged in, confirm that the normal pages appear and the status is back to 200. If you use caching, clear the cache here as well.

If you no longer need the plugin, you can deactivate and delete it from the Plugins list. Deactivating it also ends maintenance mode.

Things to keep in mind

• Don't keep it on for long: 503 signals a temporary outage. Leaving the maintenance page up for a long time can affect search results. Finish the work as quickly as you can and turn maintenance mode off right away.
• Back up before you start: Maintenance mode only hides the site; it doesn't protect the site if the work goes wrong.
• Keep a way for administrators to log in: If you remove the default exclusions (wp-login, login), even the login screen may show the maintenance page. For handling the login screen, see also "How to let only administrators log in during maintenance mode".

How it differs from methods without a plugin

WordPress core also has a maintenance mode used during updates. If a .maintenance file exists in the WordPress root, WordPress shows the message "Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute." with a 503. WP-CLI's wp maintenance-mode activate uses the same mechanism.

However, the core mechanism turns itself off automatically 10 minutes after the time written in the file. Everyone, including administrators, sees the maintenance message, so it suits work that takes only a few minutes. For longer work, or when administrators need to check the normal pages, an approach like the plugin in this article fits better. The differences are covered in detail in "How to set up WordPress maintenance mode: plugins, custom code and WP-CLI", and if you get stuck on core's maintenance screen, see "How to fix WordPress stuck in maintenance mode".

Summary

• WP Maintenance Mode is now called "LightStart", and you configure it from "LightStart" in the left menu.
• The maintenance page is a regular page; choose it with "Select page" on the "Design" tab.
• Turn it on and off with "Status" on the "General" tab, and use "Frontend Role" and "Exclude" to decide who can see the site and which URLs or IP addresses are excluded. Exclusions use partial matching.
• During maintenance, the site returns 503 and Retry-After. Clear caches before and after turning it on or off.
• For work that finishes within 10 minutes, core's .maintenance or WP-CLI is enough.

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