How to put magento in maintenance

Question

Is it possible to put a magento site under an maintenance flag so that visitors will get a message that the site is under construction? I can\'t find this setting in the admin a

Answer 1

These are good modules to put your magento sites into maintenance mode anytime you want. http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/store-maintenance.html

OR

If you want fun with working on the code then create maintenance.flag file which put your site into maintenance mode. And if you want to change the template of it then goto errors/default/503.phtml file. Just change the design of it.

This is a simple solution.