Process to pause sites while owner is away?

[Em_P]

Hello everyone,

One of our faculty will be on leave for a while but plans to come back (in maybe 2 years) and wants to continue building on her site when she returns. So I’m trying to figure out what to do with it while she is away. My simplest idea is to just transfer ownership for the time being, but the timing is so long that I’m wondering if there’s a better way to handle this situation.

Because she wants to update it later, I don’t think archiving is the way to go. I am hoping if it’s possible to keep a back up on Installatron (or Jetbackup?) and uninstall the site. Then, simply restore the site when she returns.

Is this possible? Has someone encountered this situation before? Is there a better process for these cases?

[Ed_Beck]

I’ve used this plugin before, it’s called Under Construction. It replaces any page on your webpage with a page you can word and define.

Under Construction

So you could not delete or archive anything, and just install this plugin, and allow the faculty member to write their custom “away message”

Something like:
I’m out on leave, but check back for great new content Fall 2023!

[taylorjadin]

I think this is probably the route I would go as well. That will be simpler than taking the site down and recreating it later.

Em, if this isn’t an option for you and you need to take the site down, I would generate a cPanel backup for the account, or have the faculty member do it, then have them hang on to that file on their computer or in cloud storage or something for when they return.

We have instructions on how to generate the backup here:

Generating a Full cPanel Backup

When they return, the backup can be restored using WHM, but you can reach out to our support email and we can help you if you have questions at that point.

[Em_P]

This is interesting Unfortunately, their site is using Omeka, so this can’t be used. But definitely keeping this in my toolbox!

[Ed_Beck]

I didn’t get that from your first post…

This isn’t something I have done before… but there is a maintenance plugin from Omeka.

Omeka Classic - Maintenance

It looks like it replaces pages with the content from views/public/index/index.php which is currently set to: “Omeka is currently under maintenance.”

I wonder if you could edit or modify that page with the same intention as what I shared above. I would still rather do that then try to do the archive method.

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I’m also guessing there is something I am not understanding about your policies as well, like why does it matter if the website stays in its current state for a while. It wouldn’t be the first site on the internet that has been static for a bit.

[taylorjadin]

If its a single Omeka site, maybe clone the site to a different location or subdomain (like archive.theirsite.com), then put a simple page in the location of the old site (theirsite.com)?