I have a site on my server where the site owner has asked that I temporarily take the site "offline" for a couple of months. I suppose I could just ask her to login to her regitrar account and change the nameservers, but I want to spare her the effort so I'm wondering what my options are in WHM.

It's a fully developed site with a few addon scripts installed, so I'd rather not just delete the site and then have to reinstall everything afterward. Is there a way to just make the site inaccessible (outside of suspending it)? Perhaps just edit the DNS zone settings? I'm leaning towards editing DNS because I'd like to still keep her mail active.


Vito

You would have to suspend the account via WHM , this wont effect the sites data at all so when you unsuspend it will all be there but only thing is mail wont be active. So she/he might have to use a free email account such as yahoo to keep in contact with you. Hope this help's you.

Thanks but I don't want to suspend the account. Mainly because if anyone tries to visit the site, they will see a suspended page and that doesn't look good. I just want to make it inaccessible via a browser.

Can I just not edit a DNS zone such as the A record so that it is not viewable in a browser but mail is still active?

Vito

Just add in a .htaccess to the public_html/ that redirects users to google or something.

You can always edit the suspension index page for his/her site or Do what txitcs say's so the mail can still be active. Just replace the index file with w.e you want and save a backup of the original index. :-)

Just rename the public_html to something else like public_html-offline. If you want to make it show a blank page or splash page, just create an empty public_html folder and put an index.html file in it.

There is an option in WHM to suspend an account under you, use it.

You can return 503(Service Unavailable) status for the site.

Long ago I wrote a how-to on it here:
Return 503 Status with Apache Web Server (http://www.dotcomunderground.com/blogs/2006/08/31/return-503-status-with-apache-webserver/)

You can return 503(Service Unavailable) status for the site.

Long ago I wrote a how-to on it here:
Return 503 Status with Apache Web Server (http://www.dotcomunderground.com/blogs/2006/08/31/return-503-status-with-apache-webserver/)
That's great. Thank you! :)

Vito

Vito all you need to do is suspend the users account.

Vito all you need to do is suspend the users account.As I said earlier in the thread, I don't want to suspend the account because it will then display a suspension page and that does not look very good for the domain.

Vito

Why don't you change the home page, index.html or index.php to something else or just put some blank page ?

You can also block the site by renaming the user directory under /home

Why don't you change the home page, index.html or index.php to something else or just put some blank page ?

You can also block the site by renaming the user directory under /home

i think this is the best way to go ,rename you index and create a new index to will say site down due to maintenance
or a similiar mesage or rediret to google or something else

If you don't want the users to see anything when they try to access the site, you could just use the IP deny manager in cPanel and range ban everyone from the site. That way, you don't have to post a fake message to users in the index page.

If you don't want the users to see anything when they try to access the site, you could just use the IP deny manager in cPanel and range ban everyone from the site. That way, you don't have to post a fake message to users in the index page.

To expand on that, you could stick an .htaccess in the root directory with:

order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from your.ip.address.here
allow from your.clients.ip.here

This would allow you to let them or you in to work on it, denying all others.

Thanks so much, all. I now have several viable options to get the job done. :)

Vito