Returning HTTP 503 using PHP (maintenance page)

Published February 07, 2015

If you need to create an "under maintenance" page in PHP without getting Googlebot to index it, create a PHP script.

Let's call it maintenancee503.php and place in the home directory, in this case assume under /www/ARUL/. Add these lines:


header('HTTP/1.1 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable');
header('Status: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable');
header('Retry-After: 3600');

Table of Contents

Without using PHP - Apache's httpd.conf file

If you have access to Apache's httpd.conf file, you can edit it to output HTTP 503 code to all requests.

First, create a simple or custom file and call it maintenance503.html under /www/ARUL.

Configure Apache to forward all requests to this script maintenance503.php.

In Apache, this is what you would typically do. Edit httpd.conf or .htaccess file and include these lines:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} !=503
RewriteRule !^maintenance503.html$ %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/maintenance503.html [L,R=503]

Make sure the Error 503 line contains this:

ErrorDocument 503 /www/ARUL/maintanence503.html

Then restart Apache. If editing .htaccess, you don't need to restart Apache.

If you have any questions, please contact me at arulbOsutkNiqlzziyties@gNqmaizl.bkcom. You can also post questions in our Facebook group. Thank you.

Disclaimer: Our website is supported by our users. We sometimes earn affiliate links when you click through the affiliate links on our website.

Last Updated: February 07, 2015. This post was originally written on February 07, 2015.