How do I take my site offline?

[bbtuna]

I AM NOT ASK HOW TO CLOSE MY ACOUNT

With that out of the way, is there some way (I'm guessing through cPanel) to bring public_html, or just my website in general, down for maintence? I want to make some changes to public_html/index.html but not allow people to see the changes untill I'm ready.

How do I do this?

Thanks in advance!

 

[rlodge]

Not sure if this is the best way but how about making a new index.html page explaining that your site is going through some maintenance and rename your index.html to something like "~index.html"?

Once you are done with the maintenance, delete the temp index.html and rename "~index.html" to index.html.

I am far from an expert but it seems that in this way, guests don't have to see a 404 error message and your index.html gets fixed in private.

 

[cowctcat]

create a temporary index page say tmpindex.html saying that your site is down for maintenence and about the time it will be back up.
AND redirect your whole site to that file this way none of your site is accessable at the time of the maintenance

 

[woiwky]

If the changes are superficial, i.e. you're not making important bug fixes or anything like that, then it's better to do it as rlodge suggested so that visitors can go on using your site. For bug fixes however, then it would be better to do something like kllctcat said. Although you'll need to make an exception for yourself so you aren't redirected, of course.