Building Custom Maintenance Pages

Hi all,

One of the most frustrating issues I always have when building custom-designed, bespoke websites is the ability to create my own holding page. There are a metric tonne of ‘maintenance mode’ and ‘under construction’ plugins available, but they usually hide the developer stuff behind a paywall ‘pro’ version. The problem I have then is two-fold:

1) I need to develop on whatever theme is readily available (usually Twenty Thirteen)
2) I need to build my own custom holding page that supports shortcodes

The issue with #1 is that many clients have no idea what their website will look like when they have a holding page designed. This means the theme is very likely to be replaced, either with a custom-coded theme, or with a purchased template. So whatever page is coded, it can’t simply all be messed up as soon as development starts on the full site and the theme is changed.

With #2, I don’t need a wishy-washy plugin to do something as basic as building my own page. All I require is something that will display whatever page I want regardless of what is going on in the backend.

The solution I’ve found is to use two very useful plugins. And might I add that they are both FREE!
To achieve theme isolation, I use the Multiple Themes plugin (link: here). This plugin allows you to attach any theme that is installed within your wordpress to any page/post on your site. This works even if the theme is not activated.
In order to then ensure this page is displayed to anyone who visits your website, I’ve found a plugin called Loft Maintenance (link: here). This plugin is simply brilliant. You can lock down your whole site and only show a single page coded through the wordpress editor. Which means full editor support. Including shortcodes.

I hope this helps others as much as it helps me. I intend to use these two plugins whenever I require custom-coded holding pages from now on.