Sorry, I have not tried Lock Out, but this plugin is good up to WP 2.7
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wet-maintenance/
Have a great day!
there is one caled “maintenance mode” that can do that as well.
I’ll second the Maintenance Mode recommendation. I’ve run it on my 2.6.1 installation without any problems.
It respects role-manager settings (so that you can control who sees the maintenance page, and who can get into the site) and the maintenance page is relatively easy to customize.
The only snag is the need to disable it before upgrading the wordpress version.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/maintenance-mode/
I like the implementation of Lock Out better than the other plugins suggested here (specifically the inline ability to edit the “offline” message page).
It does in fact work with 2.6.2.
Hey mate, I was able to get LockOut to work with WP 2.7 no problems. Well except that it resets your message template – should have created a backup!