Your Cart:
0 Items
Order Total: $0.00
0 Product
$0.00




Learning tutorials

Online WordPress Training

Advertisement

How to create a Offline Site PDF Print E-mail

Joomla has a very nice feature that allows you to test your site in complete privacy. You might just need your site offline for a few minutes, you might want to show it privately to a client, or you might want to keep the site offline for weeks while you build it. Either way, this is a good solution.

Login To Your Joomla Site

tutuploadsmedia_1274895143528.png

Go to Global Configuration

tutuploadsmedia_1274895265250.png

Click on Site then Global Configuration

 

Site Offline

tutuploadsmedia_1274895329251.png

Set "Site Offline" to "Yes" and then click Save

Visit Your Site

tutuploadsmedia_1274895522044.png

Now when you visit the front of your site you'll see a screen like this. Anyone who has a Super Administrator, Administrator or Manager account can login and view the site as normal. Everyone else will only be able to see the splash. You can keep search engines, rivals and all other unwanted guests out of your site until you're ready.

Step-by-Step Tutorial Showing Edit Your Joomla Site's Offline Logo

However, if you're expecting vistiors you might want to customize the login page so that it contains your logo and your information. Here's how to do it:

Change the Logo

tutuploadstutuploadsmedia_1285182376223.png

The default Joomla offline page has a large Joomla logo and the message "The site is down for maintenance. Please check again soon."

tutuploadsmedia_1285183985578.png

In order to to start changing the page, go to the Administrator area of your website, click "Site" and then "Media Manager".

tutuploadsmedia_1285184030120.png

Click the red X next to the file called joomla_logo_black.jpg. We're going to delete that file so that you can upload your own.

Here's the thing ... you must make sure that the file you're uploading is also called joomla_logo_black.jpg. If it isn't yet, rename it.

tutuploadsmedia_1285184322369.png

At the bottom of your screen, click "Browse" to find the image on your desktop. Then click "Start Upload". If your image had uploaded successfully you should be able to visit the front of your site and see the new logo.

tutuploadsmedia_1285184392948.png

Changing the Text

tutuploadsmedia_1285184468984.png

If you'd like to change the text that appears on your offline page, go to Site >> Global Configuration and you can edit two area:
- Offline Message
- Site Name

tutuploadsmedia_1285184503954.png

Click Save when you're done and visit your new offline page:

tutuploadsmedia_1285184569039.png

 

This is Part 3 of a series of tutorials on Joomla's offline page:

Joomla allows a site to be taken offline with a setting in the Administrator Global Configuration panel.  When this happens, frontend access is no longer permitted and a special offline page is displayed. 

How is the Offline Page Created?

By default, the offline page is created from the System Template.  You'll find a file called offline.php in the /templates/system/ folder. The file itself is fairly straight-forward and can be divided into five parts:

Joomla Offline Page

Part 1. This single line provides error messages, for example if you try to login but enter the wrong information:

view sourceprint?
1.<jdoc:include type="message"></jdoc:include>

Part 2. This places a Joomla logo on the page:

view sourceprint?
1.<div id="frame" class="outline">
2. 
3.<img src="/joomla_logo_black.jpg" alt="Joomla! Logo" align="middle"></div>

Part 3. This places your site name on the page:

view sourceprint?
1.<h1>
2. getCfg('sitename'); ?>
3. </h1>

Part 4. This places an offline message on the page:

view sourceprint?
1.<p>
2. 
3.getCfg('offline_message'); ?>
4. </p>

Part 5. This final and longest part of the code places a login box. This code runs from:

all the way down to:

Creating Your Own Joomla Offline Page

You could of course just edit the default offline.php but you'd lose any changes as soon you upgraded your Joomla site. The best way to do this is to create a file called offline.php in your template folder. Copy the following files:

  • /templates/system/offline.php
  • /templates/system/css/offline.css
  • /templates/system/css/offline_rtl.css

and add those file to:

  • /templates/your_template/offline.php
  • /templates/your_template/css/offline.css
  • /templates/your_template/css/offline_rtl.css

This will give you a platform to safely customize the files.

 

Would you like 100s more of these Joomla tutorials - the same used by Apple, Sun and IBM to learn Joomla?

Every day, people are building great websites with Joomla.
Joomla Training OnlineWith Open Source Training, they have access to online classes and support from the best teachers in the Joomla world.

Our professional teachers have created videos and tutorials for you that walk you step-by-step through everything you'll need to build wonderful Joomla websites. These are the same lessons we use to help clients like Apple, Sun, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and NASA.