The best maintenance plugins for your pages under constructions

I’m sure we all remember the classic illustrations of new sites with a small sign saying “Site under construction” from the early days of the Internet and the first boom in the creation of web pages. These were placed to let Internet users know that the content they were looking for was coming, but was not yet available. These used to be very rudimentary landing pages but over time they’ve become more sophisticated and have become part of the branding and communication of the web. Almost all CMS (content management systems) include maintenance plugins for pages under construction, and even web templates are beginning to incorporate them in their content.

They’re no longer just the classic icon with a construction site barrier, but now pursue other objectives such as generating expectation around the presentation of a product or service, enabling countdowns so you know exactly when you’ll find the content, and offering contact forms for resolving questions and doubts. Now there are even hundreds of plugins with which you can create a maintenance landing page in just a few clicks.

Why have a maintenance page?

Once companies have understood the importance of having a presence on the Internet with a website, a blog, or accounts on different social networks, they must manage these and be aware that it’s as important to keep this presence updated and cared for as it is to have it in the first place.

Companies often make the mistake of keeping static information on their websites and don’t usually move or update it as regularly as their blogs or social networks. This is a big mistake because having an outdated website is even more harmful than not having one at all.

Your website is your company’s best business card and its function goes beyond a repository for the company’s details – the telephone, a physical address, or a contact address. It should contain important information about your business, such as the products and services you offer, catalogs, achievements, customer reviews, etc.

If you offer all the relevant information for users in an organized and updated way, you will also improve your positioning in search engines, since search engines index pages that are updated frequently and that include the appropriate keywords for each sector. This will allow you to increase the number of subscribers, contact requests, and sales.

A website requires constant maintenance to fulfill its function of being your letter of introduction on the Internet. And there are three important things to keep in mind when updating your site.

• Security

One of the biggest problems a website can have is security since you’re responsible for keeping your clients’ and users’ data safe. For this reason, it must be as secure as possible. You cannot risk leaving yourself vulnerable to attacks because it could compromise your privacy and that of your customers, discrediting you and undermining the trust of your users and customers.

• Content

Well-organized and updated content helps to build more traffic and reach more people, which means more potential customers and a stronger company image.

• Design

Design trends are changing constantly, and you must be aware of these changes to continue to attract attention. You have to work on the container as much as on the content.

How do you update all the content?

Ideally, you should update the content on a local server and make backups to restore any errors, but sometimes updating a website means having to take the site down for a certain amount of time in a planned manner. Google Analytics is usually used to find out when there is least traffic, helping you to identify the best time to make changes. It’s best to enable a maintenance page so that users know what’s happening and why they can’t find the content they expected.

It’s also recommended to perform some specific actions so that the negative impact is as small as possible because if your product data remains active when the landing page is not, this will generate errors and search engines may penalize you. Therefore, it is advisable to inform Google or other search engines of the interruption of a site and to carry out certain actions, with the most important being:

• Limiting the frequency in which search engines crawl your site.
• Eliminating the automatic updating of articles.
• Pausing any advertising campaigns you’re running.

Once you’ve made these changes, you should create a maintenance landing page that’s as attractive as possible and leave it up throughout the time that your changes are taking place. This landing page can be made in HTML or using different plugins. The elements that a good maintenance page should have include:

• The logo of your brand and its corporate image (colors, fonts, etc.)
• A form for the user to fill out or use to make a query and be notified by email about what’s happening.
• A countdown so they can see how much time is left before your website is ready.
• A text explaining what is happening, why, and when everything will be restored.
• Information about the social networks where they can maintain contact and communication.

A creative maintenance page should be memorable and strengthen your brand identity in the user’s mind. Here are some tips for making it user-friendly:

• Conciseness: Explain the issue concisely. Differentiate it from other types of problems, such as a 404 error. Sometimes many websites use the same message and this can lead to confusion. You can learn more about 404 errors in this article.
• Understanding: You need to show that you understand that users who come looking for information on your website aren’t going to find what they’re looking for, so it’s important to apologize and assure them that you’ll be restoring the service as soon as possible.
• Creativity: It’s always good to deal with problems with creativity and humor. This will reduce users’ frustration and ensure your brand will retain a positive image in their minds.
  
• Accuracy: Explain the time you need to maintain the website, and remember it’s useful to enable a countdown or set a deadline by which time services will be restored.

The best maintenance plugins for your pages under construction

Currently, more than 40% of websites use the CMS WordPress, a very simple content management system that makes the design of your pages easy to implement and manage.

WordPress already has a native functionality to warn that the site is under maintenance, but there are different plugins that allow you to customize this important message and the design of the landing page itself.

As it can be easily customized, Flaticon offers hundreds of resources that you can easily add, customizing their colors, their finishes, etc. You’ll also find thousands of illustrations, icons, landings pages, and free stock images on Freepik.

The main plugins for WordPress include:

Coming Soon Page, Under Construction & Maintenance Mode (SeedProd)

Coming Soon Page, Under Construction & Maintenance Mode is one of the most popular plugins with more than 1 million active installations. It’s easy to implement and install with just one click. It also includes an editor that allows you to customize every aspect of your “Coming Soon” or “Under maintenance” page.

WP Maintenance Mode (Designmodo)

WP Maintenance Mode is a multipurpose plugin with a wide range of functionalities. It allows for more customization than other plugins, including providing different backgrounds and fonts, a countdown timer, and a subscription form that your users can fill in if they want to receive an email telling them when your website becomes available again.

Elementor Maintenance Mode

The Elementor Maintenance Mode it’s not a dedicated maintenance plugin, but it includes an easy-to-use maintenance mode. It’s free, responsive, and allows you to customize user access while your site is under maintenance. It also lets search engines know whether to continue indexing your site or temporarily ignore it.

Minimal Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode

This plugin is compatible with most WordPress templates. It can be integrated with MailChimp to get your visitors’ emails and with Google Fonts to increase the plugin’s font list. You can also add CSS and HTML easily for more advanced modifications.

Now you’ve seen some different options, you can think about improving and updating your website to give your users a better experience. At Flaticon we help you to make this experience as user-friendly as possible. We’ll have your website up and running for you in 3, 2, 1…