SoftGlaze Maintenance Mode & Coming Soon

by Azhar Ali

5.0

(1 ratings)

SoftGlaze Maintenance Mode & Coming Soon shows visitors a Coming Soon or Maintenance page while you work on the site, and lets the people you choose see the real site.

Two modes

Coming Soon sends HTTP 200, for a site that has not launched yet.
Maintenance sends HTTP 503 with a Retry-After header, which tells search engines the outage is temporary.
Off shows the normal site.

The mode is switched from the status bar at the top of the settings screen. The status bar also shows the HTTP status being sent, and warns you when Coming Soon is set to 503. The “Add noindex / nofollow” option adds a robots tag that asks search engines not to index the page. It is on by default; switch it off if you want your Coming Soon page indexed.

Templates and design

12 layouts: six for Coming Soon and six for Maintenance.
Background, text and accent colours, a background image, a template image and a logo with an adjustable maximum height.
Heading and body fonts chosen separately from Poppins, Inter, Playfair Display, System UI, Georgia, Helvetica or Monospace. Poppins, Inter and Playfair Display are bundled with the plugin and served from your own site.
An option to use your theme’s fonts and colours instead.
More than 20 content presets: ready-made headlines and messages for launches, redesigns and maintenance, previewed before you apply them.
Social profile icons for Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, WhatsApp, TikTok, Telegram and more, drawn as inline SVG.

You can also show a WordPress page or a SoftGlaze Landing Page instead of a template. Landing Pages are a post type that works with the block editor and with page builders such as Elementor.

Countdown

Six countdown styles: Simple, Boxed, Circle, Neon, Glitch and Pill. When the countdown reaches zero the page either shows a message you write or redirects visitors to a URL you choose.

Subscriber form

Build the form from Text, Email and Phone fields, in one or two columns, and drag them into order.
Subscribers are saved in a table in your WordPress database with the email address, the other form fields, the visitor’s IP address, browser user agent and the page URL. You can export them to CSV.
An optional email to you for each new subscriber.
A short privacy text under the form, which you can edit.
A honeypot field and a per-IP hourly limit to slow down spam.
To use another form plugin instead, set the Form Type to Shortcode and paste the form’s shortcode.

Sending subscribers to Mailchimp or to a webhook URL is optional and off until you configure it. See External services below.

Scheduling

Set a start and end time and the plugin switches to Coming Soon or Maintenance when the window starts, then back to the mode you choose when it ends. Scheduling uses WP-Cron.

Who can see the real site

Administrators always see the real site.
Allow all logged-in users, chosen roles or chosen user accounts.
An IP allowlist, with CIDR ranges for IPv4.
A secret bypass URL, and temporary bypass links that expire after the number of hours you set.
A password form on the Coming Soon or Maintenance page.
Preview links that show a template to someone without changing the live mode.
URL rules: never intercept some paths, or only intercept the paths you list. WooCommerce cart, checkout and account pages can be left open.

Visit counts

The plugin counts views of the Coming Soon or Maintenance page and new subscriptions per day, and shows the last seven days in the settings. Only the daily totals are stored, in your own database, for 60 days. No visitor data is stored for this and nothing is sent anywhere. Visits by administrators are not counted, and counting can be switched off.

Tracking and verification

The Integrations tab has fields for a Google Analytics 4 measurement ID, a Google Tag Manager container ID and a Meta Pixel ID. Each is empty by default and nothing is loaded until you enter an ID. Entering one loads that service’s script on the Coming Soon or Maintenance page; see External services.

Google, Bing and Facebook site verification codes, and other <meta> tags, can be added to the page head. These are tags in the page and make no requests.

Version 1.7.0 removed the custom code boxes. See the FAQ.

External services

The plugin connects to no outside service on a default install. Each service below is used only after you configure it in the settings, and only on the Coming Soon or Maintenance page or when a visitor subscribes.

Google Tag Manager

What it is: Google’s tag management service.
When: you enter a Google Tag Manager container ID under Integrations. The Coming Soon or Maintenance page then loads https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id=<your ID>, plus https://www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=<your ID> for visitors without JavaScript.
What is sent: the visitor’s browser requests these files from Google, which receives the visitor’s IP address, browser details and the page URL, and any data the tags in your container collect.
Terms: https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/tag-manager/use-policy/
Privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy

Google Analytics 4

What it is: Google’s web analytics service.
When: you enter a GA4 measurement ID under Integrations. The Coming Soon or Maintenance page then loads https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=<your ID> and records a page view.
What is sent: the page view, the visitor’s IP address, browser details, the page URL and Google Analytics cookies.
Terms: https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/terms/us/
Privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy

Meta Pixel

What it is: Meta’s conversion tracking pixel.
When: you enter a Meta Pixel ID under Integrations. The Coming Soon or Maintenance page then loads https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js and sends a PageView event, or loads https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=<your ID> for visitors without JavaScript.
What is sent: the PageView event, the visitor’s IP address, browser details, the page URL and Meta cookies.
Terms: https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms/businesstools
Privacy policy: https://www.facebook.com/privacy/policy/

Mailchimp

What it is: Mailchimp’s email marketing service, through the Mailchimp Marketing API.
When: you fill in the Mailchimp API key, audience (list) ID and data center under Integrations. After that, each new subscription is sent from your server to https://<data center>.api.mailchimp.com/3.0/lists/<audience ID>/members/.
What is sent: the subscriber’s email address, and first name, last name and phone when your form collects them, authenticated with your API key.
Terms: https://mailchimp.com/legal/terms/
Privacy policy: https://www.intuit.com/privacy/statement/

Webhook

What it is: a URL of your own choosing, such as an automation service or your own server.
When: you enter a Webhook URL in the Access Control tab. After that, each new subscription is sent from your server to that URL as a JSON POST request.
What is sent: the email address, the other form fields, the visitor’s IP address, the page URL and the time of the subscription.
The plugin has no terms or privacy policy for this destination: it is the address you enter, and that service’s own terms apply.

Links the plugin shows but never requests

The Documentation, Support and Rate links on the Plugins screen point to this plugin’s pages on wordpress.org.
Social profile links on the page are the URLs you enter.