Error 503 with "under construction" active

Hello. “Under construction” plugin is active in my site since I am doing some changes. But I have just received a message from Google detailing a list of more than 1.000 pages on my site that show error 503 and informing me that my site could not be indexed or shown in search results.

I have read this post (already closed unfortunately), and I agree with @designerken suggestion
“If I am creating a coming soon page, wouldn’t i want the headers to return a 200 status so that it can start indexing that page? So that the company’s contact and business information is starting to propagate in search engines.”

My company s been in internet for more than 22 years. I dont want Google to forget it.

Can you help me to solve this issue? Thank you

PD: No cache plugin, the only active plugin on my site is “Under construction”.

Hello @Tangauta,

Thanks for writing in! :slight_smile:

I have followed @designerken solution by editing the code to return 200 status. I’ve already updated this on the /wp-content/plugins/tco-under-construction/functions/output.php file in your server. Please be reminded that this is a quick fix.

I have already followed up and added this to our list of feature requests. This request however, will be taken into consideration for future development. All of the requests are discussed with our team internally and prioritized based on the amount of interest a particular feature might receive.

Let us know how it goes. You can get back to us with the Google indexing reports.

Thank you.

Hello Jumar, thanks for your help again. Google sent to me a list of more than 1.000 pages but it only allows me to update 10/day. So I decided to disable “under construction”. Oh, by the way, it was the only active plugin but, according to Google, it is producing a damage to my reputation.

I have to say that I was really happy with X before. I have sent several congrats messages as a matter of fact. But I am sorry to say that after the X-Pro thing, X is not that easy and fun anymore. I have spent almost a whole year, without knowing what to do with the blank homepage, just because nobody told me the problem was too much Essential Grids. The lack of that short answer represented a huge loss for my business, which spreads news. Now this new issue that produces a massive conflct with indexation… Not funny at all.

I really appreciate your time and effort to solve this problem and provide a detailed answer @jumar, althought it is a “quick fix”. I hope disabling “Under construction” does not create a new issue.

Thank you again.

You’re welcome, @Tangauta. And, thank you for your feedback.

Under Construction is not working for my site either, but it was working before the latest update of X.

Hi there,

Please consider that the Under Construction plugin works ok and the matter of this thread was whether it throws the 503 under maintenance header or the 200 ok headers. As mentioned in the thread which the original poster shared we decided to go with 503 as it is a semantic way to do so.

The change @jumar suggested is for this specific case which customer asked to have a 200 ok header. We already added a feature request to have an option in the plugin so the customer can decide which one to use.

That is not a bug and if the plugin is not working for you it might have another cause which we need to investigate. Please kindly open up a separate thread and give us detailed information about the steps you follow to recreate the issue and give us details about the issue.

I also suggest that you give the URL/User/Pass of your website in the thread that you will create using a Secure Note. Please do not add the Secure Note here as it is visible to the original poster of the thread and you are not the original poster.

Thank you for your understanding.

Thanks @Chritopher.amirian
I am aware you are answering to @pearlmultimedia but I have to agree with her: “Under construction” was perfectly working before, as many other X functions and plugins. No messages from Google about possible bad reputation, no needs to add 200 headers or codes, etc… It was pure happiness.

Aside from suggesting to open a new thread, suggestion that I completely understand of course, I hope you also understand our frustration as customers, since we have to bother you, wait for your answers and/or do things twice or three times. We invest extra time + stress + money = not funny.

Thank you for your understanding.

Hey @Tangauta,

Thanks for the feedback. It has been noted and will be forwarded to our developers.

Please also take note of what Christopher has mentioned in his reply:

In one hand 503 response is good to show Google that this site is under maintenance and Google will reindex the page in the future as soon as 200 is set.

In other hand having 200 response is a good point which shows that the site is already up and running and will soon have new content.

We took the first approach in our plugin. I'm sure you will be able to find other 3rd party plugins if yo are interested in having the second approach.

The best solution to this is to have an option to select which status you would like to have as the http status code. This has been in the feature list already and hopefully might be added in the next release cycle of the underconstruction extension.

Thank you.

Sure. Thanks.

You’re welcome! :slight_smile:

This topic was automatically closed 10 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.