I’m lazy and I don’t want to write a plugin, so I asked on Twitter if someone had one to black out a site for SOPA on the 18th of January. If you don’t get why this is a thing, please read WordPress.org’s post on SOPA. A lot of sites are going black from 8am to 8pm. I am, and I to didn’t want to use a plugin.
My solution for this involves two files and is all thanks to Pete!
@Ipstenu add a .maintenance file
— Pete Mall (@petemall) January 12, 2012
To do this is really simple. Go in and make a file called .maintenance in the top level of your WP install. For most people, it’s the same folder as your .htaccess and wp-config.php files.
Now edit that file and put in the following content:
<?php
// Let's make sure you're not an admin/logged in!
function is_user_logged_in() {
$loggedin = false;
foreach ( (array) $_COOKIE as $cookie => $value ) {
if ( stristr($cookie, 'wordpress_logged_in_') )
$loggedin = true;
}
return $loggedin;
}
if ( ! stristr($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], '/wp-admin') && ! stristr($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], '/wp-login.php') && ! is_user_logged_in() )
// If it's after 8:00:00 on the 18th, we're going to show the blackout page
if ( time() >= mktime(8,0,0,1,18,2012) ) {
// When we hit 8pm (20), we're back.
$upgrading = mktime(20,0,0,1,18,2012);
}
?>
What does this do? It’s pretty simple. First it checks to see if you’re logged in and, if so, lets you get where you need to go. If you’re not logged in, though, it checks the date and if it’s after 8am on the 18th, you get a maintenance page. After 8pm on the 18th, it swings back. (All this code, except for the date stuff which I wrote, is from Matt (Sivel):
WordPress Maintenance Mode Without a Plugin and WordPress Maintenance Mode Without a Plugin Part 3/ ) Pretty cool right? And the 8am to 8pm is based on your server’s time, so it’s all local. It’s also pretty easy to see how you change that for your own time. I would say pick your busiest time to go black.
But if you want it to look pretty, you need to do a little extra. (Code from WordPress Maintenance Mode Without a Plugin Part 2 and text from Blaccupy) Make a file called maintenance.php and put it in your wp-content folder. Here’s an example:
<?php
/* Tell search engines that the site is temporarily unavilable */
$protocol = $_SERVER["SERVER_PROTOCOL"];
if ( 'HTTP/1.1' != $protocol && 'HTTP/1.0' != $protocol ) $protocol = 'HTTP/1.0';
header( "$protocol 503 Service Unavailable", true, 503 );
header( 'Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8' );
?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>BLACKED OUT</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<style type="text/css">
body {
background: black;
text-align:center;
color: #eee;
font-family: Helvetica;
font-size: 2.2em;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div style="width: 960px; margin: 0 auto;">
<h2>This website is..</h2>
<h1>BLACKED OUT!</h1>
<p>In protest of pending US legislation, which threatens the freedoms of websites like this one and the freedoms of the people who use them, this website is offline on January 18th, 2012 from 8am to 8pm EST.</p>
<p>Please <a href="http://americancensorship.org/">help protect our free speech</a> against the corporate and political interests which seek to take them away!</p>
<p>(And don't worry, we'll be back in business tomorrow!)</p>
</div>
<?php
die();
?>
Which means your site will look like this on January 18th. You’ll notice I made some tweaks on mine. This is a default feature of WordPress, by the way. You can design your own maintenance mode page just with this one file, so y’know, party time.
Now there’s only one catch. If you update WP via the automatic updater between now and then, you lose the .maintenance file. I don’t have a fix for that, but if you do, please comment!
And yes, my sites are going dark on the 18th.
ETA: If you have a Multisite and only want SOME sites dark, use Customize the Suspended blog page from WordPress Must-Use Tutorials. Suspend the sites and boom goes the dynamite.
ETA 2: If you’re using MediaWiki (like I am on another site) I came up with this idea to go dark for SOPA. Its just a normal extension that, between those hours, redirects to the same page I use for WordPress. You could have it point to any page, of course.
<?php
if ( !defined( 'MEDIAWIKI' ) ) die();
if ( time() >= mktime(8,0,0,1,18,2012) && time() <= mktime(20,0,0,1,18,2012) ) {
include('/location-of/wp-content/maintenance.php');
exit();
}
?>
That code, sans the Mediawiki line, will also work as an extension for ZenPhoto, so pass it on.
Don’t get me wrong, I love MediaWiki. It’s ‘overkill’ for what I need, but then again, I wanted a stand-alone ‘encyclopedia’ where primarily text based articles were listed, without the ability to comment. And until someone can trim WordPress to run as fast as MediaWiki, I’m sticking with it. Well, that and they need an ‘import from MediaWiki’ tool, cause at 700-odd pages, I’m not doing it by hand. It’s a static website, and it does it’s job well.