HTTP status: Use 503 Service Unavailable

[cylkee]

Hi,

For anonymous visitors, should not Maintenance Mode throw an HTTP status of 503 Service Unavailable? I'm thinking for search engines in particular so they know not to try to reindex a maintenance page for every URL in one's site as currently it appears to send 200 OK.

Thanks!

[michael-e]

Yes, it should, probably. But for perfection you might also want a (customizable) Retry-After header.

You can do that with the HTTP Response Header Mappings extension. In the config file you could set:

'503' => 'HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable',
'ra1h' => 'Retry-After: 3600',
'ra1d' => 'Retry-After: 86400',
'ra1w' => 'Retry-After: 604800',

then add the needed page types (e.g. 503 and ra1d) to your maintenance page.

[nitriques]

@michael-e I think this extension should do it.

[michael-e]

Yep.

Solution 1

It might at least create some (documented) array in the config file. Instead of this:

'maintenance_mode' => array(
    'enabled' => 'no',
),

it could be:

'maintenance_mode' => array(
    'enabled' => 'no',
    'status_header' => 'HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable',
    'retry_after_header' => 'Retry-After: 3600',
),

If a header is not found in the config, it should not be sent.

Solution 2

To keep things simple, we might add the 503 header only. If someone needs more advanced headers (like above), he can still use the HTTP Response Header Mappings extension.

I prefer solution 2.

[nitriques]

I prefer solution 2.

Me too. And the status_header can only be the numeric status code since we already have the mapping to string.

[michael-e]

Agreed.

[brendo]

This is a good idea! I'm thinking we can send 503 by default, and then read a Retry value from the configuration? Or should we just use a sane retry default and if someone wants to modify it then they use the Response Mapping extension?

[michael-e]

I'm thinking we can send 503 by default, and then read a Retry value from the configuration?

I like this idea. As long as the config's Retry-after value is empty (which is the default), we just send a 503. If it's not empty, we send this header as well. No additional extensions needed.

[jensscherbl]

Or should we just use a sane retry default and if someone wants to modify it then they use the Response Mapping extension?

Sane default, please.

[michael-e]

The right value might be 15 minutes (if you take your site down for an upgrade or similar) or several days (during development). I don't see a sane default.

[animaux]

Anyone still into this?

[nitriques]

@animaux I am still into it, but I have other things more urgent...

[cylkee]

I gave up on Maintenance Mode and I just modify .htaccess in cases where I need 503. I think Google et al will mostly ignore Retry-after, since they do things on their own time-frame. Debating over finer detail like that just delays what I think is quite a fundamental update to this extension.

Thanks for self-assigning, @nitriques.

[animaux]

@nitriques thanks, it’s not urgent but a typical nice-to-have :)

[nitriques]

Indeed ;)