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manifest / utilities / beautiful-maintenance-mode

Beautiful Maintenance Mode

A stunning WordPress maintenance mode plugin — full-screen rotating landscape photography with Ken Burns effect and live countdown timer.

by Ahmad Baig · github.com/ahmadbaig1/beautiful-maintenance-mode · website

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Install

No release zip yet. The repository archive installs, but the folder name will carry the branch suffix and updates will not flow:

wp plugin install https://github.com/ahmadbaig1/beautiful-maintenance-mode/archive/refs/heads/main.zip

Readme

Beautiful Maintenance Mode

A WordPress plugin that turns maintenance downtime into a visual experience — full-screen rotating landscape photography with Ken Burns motion, a live countdown timer, and a frosted-glass content card.

Features

  • Full-screen slideshow — rotating landscape photos with smooth Ken Burns (pan/zoom) effect
  • Live countdown timer — days, hours, minutes, seconds ticking down to your return date
  • Frosted-glass card — legible over any background with backdrop blur
  • Online images via Pixabay — stream fresh landscape photos automatically with a free API key (no bundled images needed)
  • Admin/editor bypass — logged-in admins see the live site with an admin bar notice
  • SEO-safe — sends 503 Service Unavailable + Retry-After: 3600 headers
  • Accessible — ARIA labels, keyboard navigation (← →), prefers-reduced-motion support
  • Simple settings page — headline, subtext, countdown date, enable/disable toggle
  • Responsive — looks great on mobile

Requirements

  • WordPress 6.4+
  • PHP 8.1+

Installation

Option A — Upload zip (recommended)

  1. Download the latest zip from the Releases page or clone this repo and zip the folder
  2. Go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin
  3. Upload the zip and click Install Now
  4. Activate the plugin

Option B — Manual

  1. Clone or download this repo
  2. Upload the beautiful-maintenance-mode folder to /wp-content/plugins/
  3. Activate in Plugins → Installed Plugins

Usage

  1. Go to Settings → Maintenance Mode
  2. Set your headline, subtext, and countdown date
  3. Check Enable Maintenance Mode and save
  4. Visitors immediately see the maintenance page — you (admin) browse normally

Pixabay Integration

Stream fresh landscape photos instead of using bundled images:

  1. Get a free API key at pixabay.com/api
  2. Go to Settings → Maintenance Mode → Online Images (Pixabay)
  3. Paste your API key and set a search query (e.g. mountain sunset)
  4. Save — photos are fetched and cached for 24 hours automatically

If no API key is set, or if the API call fails, the plugin falls back to the 5 bundled landscape photos.

Photo Credits

Bundled landscape photography via Pexels — free to use under the Pexels License. Online photos streamed via the Pixabay API.

Author

Ahmad Baig — linkedin.com/in/ahmad-baig-4b425ba8 · github.com/ahmadbaig1

License

GPL v2 or later.

Read the full README on GitHub →