Don wanted a way to block access to his blog while he was fiddling with it. He found information about the 503 code online.
Of course, they want to return different codes for search engines and for users. We figured we wanted to return the same thing for users and search engines; after all "Service Unavailable" is the actual status, regardless of who's visiting. The only exception should be the blog maintainer.
Here's the .htaccess we worked out:
And here's the 503.php file I like:
We use a PHP file so that we can set the header, and so we can include a retry period for search engines.
If you're one of the few whose server allows [R=503] in the .htaccess, there's an even easier way outlined in the article details.
Continue reading "Blog Maintenance and the 503 Status" »