"deny from all" with a custom message?

Question

I'm moving to a new server and want to take all of my sites offline during the transition. I know I can put this in my root .htaccess file to block people from visiting the site:

order deny,allow
deny from all

But I want to also output a message explaining why the site is down. Is this possible?

score 11 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 25 '14 at 21:28

11

Try adding a:

ErrorDocument 403 /special_message.html

where the /special_message.html is the file that contains your message.

answered Jul 25 '14 at 21:28

Jon Lin

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This is a good start, but doesn't work with sub-URLs, if you're getting message similar to `Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.` See this answer of mine for solution - https://stackoverflow.com/a/66322976/1835470 – jave.web Aug 21 '22 at 13:50

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 05 '20 at 06:57

5

you can add a message directly from .htaccess file, eg:

ErrorDocument 403 "Account Suspended"

I think last quote is optional too.

answered Mar 05 '20 at 06:57

yo lo

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Yes, the quotes are optional. – Rodrigo Mar 21 '21 at 19:55

"deny from all" with a custom message?

2 Answers2