Hi @tomjenx,
Thanks for choosing WP Maintenance Mode!
We have made changes in the recent version of the plugin to make the user experience better and give more flexibility in customizing the maintenance page, as you can now use Gutenberg editor or a page builder to easily customize the page and select a pre-created design or create your new custom one.
The extra plugin (Otter) is only needed if users want to use any of the pre-designed templates that are created with the help of this plugin. As you do not want to use the pre-design templates, you can remove the plugin and continue using WP Maintenance plugin without it.
Have a nice day!
Hiya
Thanks for the reply. However, that’s my point; after installing and activating the maintenance page plugin, I click on the plug-in settings and appear to be forced to choose a pre built template, either a maintenance page one or a coming soon one. Clicking on either forces the download of the otter plugin, which, as the application cannot have plugins installed, simply errors out. Is there a way to bypass this choice and get directly to the setting of the plugin?
Many thanks
Tom
Plugin Support
Kush
(@kushnamdev)
Hey @tomjenx,
We are sorry for the inconvenience the new update may have caused you, but we did all the changes to improve the overall experience of our users. That’s completely your choice to have otter installed on your website or not. You can uninstall the plugin right after it is installed and you can display a simple page during the maintenance mode instead of the pre-built templates which Otter provides.
The last thing is that if you already had the WP Maintenance Mode plugin installed before, you can opt out of this change after the update of the plugin and keep everything as it was before (You see the Migrate button that could be clicked to switch to the new version and you also have a Rollback button after that in case you want to switch back).
Thanks for understanding.
Have a great day!
You can uninstall the plugin right after it is installed
Having a completely different plugin to be installed FIRST before even be able to get this plugin to work without the possibility to skip this step in the first place is extremely bad behaviour from WP Maintenance Mode…
This is exactly what @tomjenx, me and for sure other users too don’t want to do. Or simply can’t do, because of server restrictions.
I deleted the plugin immediately, without even testing it further.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 6 months ago by
bios4.
I don’t understand.
I have the same issue. I manage so many WordPress websites in my day job and as a freelander and this was my go-to maintenance mode and coming-soon page plugin, especially to toss it on private dev sites that we never intend on making public so they would be permanently in the “maintenance mode” page so only logged-in devs can work on them.
I installed the plugin, I already have a word doc ready to just copy/paste my values for settings like what the title, heading, and text will be, the URL for the background we use for all our sites, and the CSS we use to theme it to our colors.
This update did not improve my user experience. After installing it fresh on a website, it forces me to choose one of two templates, then it installs the Otter plugin (which makes it take a while because I have to now wait for that). Your update is making it so I now have extra work to do in uninstalling the plugin before evening see the settings page.
Now it also creates an additional page in my “Pages” area? I have to import a template?
I liked it simple, where I could just set it up all in one place and move on to the next site. I don’t want to be spending extra time designing the perfect page.
Please keep in mind that your userbase isn’t just made up of casual users. It’s also made up of “power users” like those of us complaining about this update because you’re forcing us through an onboarding experience when we already know how and why we want to use your plugin.
Plugin Support
Kush
(@kushnamdev)
Hey @tessawatkinsllc
We are sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for leaving your valuable feedback, I will move it forward.
Thanks
