Best way to disable a site?

[VB Programmer]

I have a 50 page site. How can I temporarily redirect everything to a page
that says "This Website Is Currently Down"?

Thanks.

 

[snt]

You can do this in IIS. In documents, add the page you want to
redirect to and set that as the default (first in order) page. Hope
this helps.

snt
http://www.flexoweb.com
http://www.onlinemall.com

 

[VB Programmer]

What if they bookmarked one of the existing pages? I need all pages to be
redirected, not just a redefinition of the "default" page.

Thanks.

 

[Aaron Corcoran]

VB Programmer,

One thing you could do is to create a simple user control that would
host some code assisting with your redirect. Although it would entail
having to touch each of the fifty pages in your collection, this type
of implementation would allow you to modify the code at any time
without worries.

Again, I am unsure if this is the best method, but it would work.

Another option would be the IIS option. You could change the 404 error
page, for example, to forward them to a specified maintenance page.
The downside is that this would be universal, so if you had any other
sites or applications on that server, than any 404 errors would also
redirect them to the maintenance page. This would not be a recommended
solution unless that is the only application on that IIS Web.

I hope this helps,
Aaron

 

[bradley]

Enable forms authentication in web.config and have it use a form called
websitedown.aspx instead of login.aspx that simply displays your message
with no controls. Attempts to load any form in your website would redirect
to websitedown.aspx, it requires no additional programming, and can be
disabled / enabled by modifying a few lines of configuration.

 

[Aaron Corcoran]

Bradley.

Ahh great idea in using the built in functionality for the login! I'll
have to remember that.

Aaron

 

[snt]

Ok, I was wrong on that.

I am not sure if web.config approach will take care of it when the
resoures are not aspx, asp, htm etc. , eg, pdf (in case you have them
in your site). If yes, thats not a bad idea.

Another way you can accomplish this is by creating another another
folder with only the page (sitedown.htm) you want to show to the user
and configuring IIS to redirect to this page on 'page not found' error.
Hope this helps

snt

 

[VB Programmer]

Great ideas! Thanks y'all!... as usual...

 

[TJS]

if you have common header or footer file then you could put something in
there to redirect the user to a "site - down" page

 

[Alan Silver]

I have a 50 page site. How can I temporarily redirect everything to a page

that says "This Website Is Currently Down"?

How about creating a new folder with just a single page in it that gives
the message. Then change the config of IIS to use that folder for the
web site instead of the real one, and that page for all 404s.

That way, any and all page requests (whether static HTML, ASP or
ASP.NET, whether genuine URLs or errors) get passed to this one page.

No offence to anyone else's suggestions, but this is way simpler than
the other ideas ;-)