Follow these steps to activate maintenance mode on the site and allow only permitted users to access the site:
- Log in to Dashboard as an administrator.
- Click WP Maintenance Mode item in the Settings menu to get a screen similar to the following:
- Select Activated for the Status field.
- Select Yes for the Bypass for Search Bots field.
- Select the user roles allowed to view the backend and frontend while in maintenance mode via the Backend Role and Frontend Role settings.
- Add any posts, pages, or links to exclude from maintenance mode by using the Exclude setting. You should only add the slug without the other parts of the URL. ...