Maintenance page

Hello,
I'm looking for a way to display a custom (static) maintenance page, while doing maintenance to my website and database.

During maintenance, I simply would like to display a HTML file, on all incoming requests.

This file would offer me the oppertunity to inform my customers about the reason the site is down and when it is expected to be up again, and what their options are in the meantime ....

As I do it now, i press stop on the IIS App, do the update, and start the app. Meanhile the customers see a generic, freightening message .....

Any ideas?
Regards,
Paul Huizer

 

Hi Paul - perhaps this will help: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/04/09/442332.aspx

 

Ah, cool link. This question comes up pretty often.

 

yeah.... looks very promising.
Looking back, Bruce directed me to this option a while back already ....
I'll go ahead and test it.
Paul

 

Works perfect. Just as I needed it. Easier than this is impossible!!!!!!
Thanks for the tip!
Paul

 

I'm glad you got it working. I respect Rick Strahl as a knowledgeable guy and I agree with his comment on Scott's blog where he asked about improved framework support for this type of feature.

For now app_offline.htm is a working solution and developing an external application controller as Scott suggested also reportedly works but I do hope there will be further framework improvement in this area in the future.

 

There are new additions that have been asked for by the ASP.NET community.
IIS7.5 supports new remote and local site features and .NET v4 has new features for the site's web.config, including a new "minimal" web.config, it's all very handy when used together.
Salute,
Mark