In website operation, for reasons such as maintenance, upgrade, or emergency handling, it is sometimes necessary to temporarily set the website to a closed status.An excellent content management system (CMS) should not only provide this basic function, but also allow you to display customized prompt information to visitors during the shutdown period, in order to maintain a good user experience and convey necessary notifications.AnqiCMS (AnqiCMS) provides such a flexible and practical mechanism.

Why do you need to shut down and display a custom prompt?

The website shutdown does not mean a simple interruption of service, but an important operational strategy. Common use cases include:

  • System upgrade and maintenance:When performing AnqiCMS version updates, database optimizations, or server migrations, etc., it is necessary to temporarily close external access to avoid data inconsistency or display errors.
  • Content is adjusted on a large scale:When the website undergoes a major overhaul, content structure adjustment, or bulk import/export of data, the site shutdown can ensure that users will not access half-finished or erroneous data.
  • Emergency issue handling:When encountering unexpected situations such as security vulnerabilities, malicious attacks, or service failures, shutting down the site can gain time for problem investigation and repair, while also avoiding the expansion of the problem.

In these cases, if a user accesses a blank page or an error page, they may feel confused and even lead to user loss.If a friendly custom prompt is displayed, it can clearly inform the user of the current status of the website, the expected recovery time, or provide other contact methods, thereby effectively managing user expectations and reducing negative impacts.

How to implement shutdown custom prompt in Anqi CMS

The AnQi CMS provides two main ways to implement customized prompts for website shutdown: through quick configuration via the background settings, as well as through in-depth customization by modifying template files.

1. Through the background global settings to configure the shutdown prompt

This is the most direct and fastest way, suitable for most scenarios where temporary shutdown and simple prompts are needed.

First, log in to your AnQi CMS backend management interface. Find and click on the menu in the left navigation bar.“Background Settings”Then select the menu.“Global Settings”.

On the global settings page, you will see a name called“Website Status”The option. It may be set to "Normal Access" by default. When you need to close the site, switch it to"Closed Site Status".

Next, a box will appear below"Shutdown Prompt"The text box. You can enter any information you want to display to the visitor here.For example, you can write 'The website is under maintenance and is expected to recover in XX hours, please try again later.'Or "Thank you for your patience, we are working hard to provide you with better service. Please contact [your email or phone number] for urgent matters.This text box supports plain text input and also supports HTML tags, which means you can use simple HTML code to bold text, add links, or break lines to make the prompt content more readable.

After configuration is complete, save the settings, your website will immediately enter a shutdown state and display the custom prompt message you have set.

2. Customize the shutdown page deeply through template files.

If you are not satisfied with the default shutdown prompt page, or you want to display an independent page that conforms to your brand image and contains more interactive elements when shutting down, Anqicms also supports in-depth customization through modifying template files.

In the template structure of AnQi CMS, there is a special template file for handling site shutdown, the path is usually the template theme you are currently usingerrors/close.html.

You can find and edit thisclose.htmlFile, design it into a complete closed station prompt page. In this template file, you can:

  • Fully customize the page layout:Introduce your website's logo, brand colors, navigation elements (if you want to display some navigation on the landing page), even add background images or videos.
  • Integrate dynamic information:Utilize the powerful template tags of AnQi CMS to dynamically display the content of the background settings. For example, you can use{% system with name="SiteName" %}To display the website name,{% system with name="SiteLogo" %}Display the Logo image. The most critical thing is that you can pass the content entered in the background "Shutdown Prompt" text box through{% system with name="SiteCloseTips" %}Label dynamically embedded into your custom page. This way, even if the overall design of the page remains unchanged, you can quickly update the prompt text in the background without modifying the template file.
  • Add additional features:For example, you can add a countdown timer to inform users when the website will be restored, or provide a simple subscription form so that users can receive notifications after the website is restored.

In this way, even if the website is in a shutdown state, users will not see a shoddy page when they visit, but a beautifully designed, complete with information and full of brand elements professional page, which greatly improves the user experience and helps maintain the brand image during maintenance.

Summary

The shutdown feature of AnQi CMS, from simple backend text prompts to flexible template file customization, can meet your needs in different scenarios.It ensures that you can still communicate effectively with users during important website maintenance or upgrades, reduce negative impact, and effectively manage the visibility of the website.Whether it is a quick release of a maintenance announcement or displaying a meticulously designed shutdown page, AnQi CMS provides you with a convenient solution.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q1: Will the closure of a website have a negative impact on search engine optimization (SEO)?A1: If a website remains closed for a long time and the server returns a 200 OK status code, search engines may consider that your website content has disappeared, which may affect the ranking.However, the shutdown feature of Anqi CMS usually configures the server to return a 503 Service Unavailable status code (service unavailable), which tells search engines that the current website is temporarily closed for maintenance and not permanently offline.Search engines usually understand this and will recrawl your site after a period of time.To minimize the impact, it is recommended to note the expected recovery time in the shutdown prompt and try to shorten the duration of the shutdown.

Q2: Can the custom shutdown page be set to automatically redirect to the homepage after the website is restored?A2: There is no built-in 'auto-resume after redirect' option in the AnQi CMS backend settings. But if you modifyerrors/close.htmlThe template file can be used to customize the offline page, where you can write logic in JavaScript to achieve similar functions.For example, you can set a script to refresh the page or check the website status, and it will automatically jump back to the homepage once the website is restored.This requires a certain amount of front-end development knowledge to implement.

Q3: I have set up the shutdown prompt information on the backend, but after the front-end refresh, it still displays blank or old content. How should I investigate?A3: This is usually caused by a caching issue. You can try the following steps:

  1. Clean the AnQi CMS system cache:Log in to the backend, find and click the "Update Cache" feature, and clear all the cache.
  2. Clear the browser cache:Refresh your browser page forcibly (Ctrl+F5 or Cmd+Shift+R), or clear the browser cache and Cookie.
  3. Check CDN or server cache:If your website uses a CDN (Content Delivery Network) or server-side cache like Varnish, you also need to log into the corresponding management interface and manually clear the cache.
  4. Confirm the template file path is correct:If it is customizederrors/close.html, make sure the file exists in the current enabled template's theme directory, and the filename does not contain any spelling errors.