Site Read-Only Mode

Read-only mode for migrations and deploys. Visitors still see the site, but nothing can be saved, so no edit, order or comment gets lost in the switch.

When you move a site to a new server, or replace the live database with one from staging, anything saved on the old copy during the move is lost. Maintenance mode hides the whole site. Site Read-Only Mode keeps it online and makes it read-only until you unfreeze, or until the freeze ends on its own.

[!NOTE] Free and open source under the GPL. No pro version, no upsells, no ads in wp-admin, no tracking. And it stays that way.

Features

• wp-admin still opens, but saves, uploads, settings and plugin changes are refused
• Block editor disables Save and Publish and says why, including for people who already have it open
• REST and XML-RPC writes get 423 Locked. Reads still work
• Visitors posting comments, forms, checkouts or sign-ups get a 503 with Retry-After and your own message
• WP-Cron is held back and runs when the freeze ends
• End time, schedule, +30 minutes and +1 hour, and quick freeze from the admin bar
• Blocked attempts listed (who, when, what), and the last ten freezes kept
• Logging in always works, so an admin can always unfreeze

Install

1. Download site-read-only-mode.zip from the latest release.
2. In WordPress, go to Plugins > Add New Plugin > Upload Plugin, choose the zip and activate it.

Or with WP-CLI:

wp plugin install https://github.com/aryanjasala/site-read-only-mode/releases/latest/download/site-read-only-mode.zip --activate

Needs WordPress 6.6+ and PHP 7.4+. To try it first, the Try in WordPress Playground badge opens a throwaway WordPress in your browser with the plugin and some demo content.

Quick look

WP-CLI is never blocked, so a deploy script can wrap the migration:

wp site-read-only-mode on --minutes=30 --reason="Moving servers"
# ... migrate ...
wp site-read-only-mode off

If the script dies halfway, the freeze still ends after 30 minutes.

Screenshots

The block editor during a freeze	Site Read-Only Mode during a freeze, with countdown and blocked attempts"> Tools > Site Read-Only Mode during a freeze, with countdown and blocked attempts
What visitors see when they send a form during a freeze

Documentation

Project structure

site-read-only-mode.php        plugin header and PSR-4 autoloader
src/
├── Plugin.php           creates the services, guards load only while frozen
├── State.php            the saved freeze, its timing and messages
├── Freezer.php          starts, extends and ends freezes
├── BlockedLog.php       what the freeze stopped
├── History.php          the last ten freezes
├── Guards/              wp-admin, REST, front-end and cron guards
├── Admin/               freeze screen, notice, admin bar
├── Editor/EditorLock.php  locks the block editor through the heartbeat
└── Cli/Command.php      wp site-read-only-mode
assets/                  editor lock and countdown scripts
tests/
├── Unit/                PHPUnit
└── e2e/                 Playwright specs and the Docker site
.wordpress-org/          screenshots
docs/                    reference, development, contributing, releasing

More free plugins

Small plugins that each fill one gap in WordPress, all free with no pro version:

	Plugin	What it does
	Page Template Usage	See which template every page uses, and fix the pages on a missing template
	Staging Guard	Stops staging copies from emailing real people or getting indexed
	Category & Tag Trash	A trash for categories, tags and custom terms, with undo and full restore
	Restore Blocks from Revisions	Restore a single block from an old revision, not the whole post

License

GPL-2.0-or-later © Aryan Jasala