How to Turn Joomla Site Offline

Posted in Tutorials

There are times (such as development and maintenance) where you need to turn your Joomla site in offline mode so that public users can not see your site.  Here is how.  This tutorial applies to Joomla 3.x

1. In the admin, go to “System -> Global configuration”

2. Under “Site Setting”, toggle the site offline switch to show a green “Yes” …

3. You can set Offline Message to “Use Custom Message” and type in a custom message.

4.  Click the “Save and Close” button.

5.  In order to test this out, go to “System -> Clear Cache”.  Then logout.  The clear the browser cache.  Close and re-open browser or use a different browser.

You should see your custom message when at home page …

6.  There is also a login so that super admins can login to view the site even in offline mode.

7.  To bring site online, go into the admin control panel via the URL such as http://www.example.com/administrator

8.  And then set the site offline switch to show a red “No”.

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