#19 - changing the offline message

When you are performing drastic changes to your website, it is advisable to turn switch your website to Offline mode (Site > Global Configuration > Site Offline > Yes). To change the offline message there are two ways.

• Change the Offline message in the Global Configuration, and insert your custom message. This is the basic configuration
• The second option is to change the html code of the page which is shown when the site is offline. This is done by editing, via ftp, or using JoomlaXplorer, the offline.php file found in the root directory. You should change the Joomla logo to the logo of your website. If necessary you can insert AdSense code, Affiliate links, mailto links for people to contact you if site is offline, or any other static html code that you require.
  

If you also want to use your Joomla template for the offline message, the following is the way to do it. Whilst the site is online, right click on the webpage and click on Vew Page Source. Then copy all the code, and paste it into a test.html file, and save it locally. Tweak the file according to your requirements. You should then copy and paste all the code into the offline.php file, taking care that the original code goes into the body of the new file.