How you implement this will depends on how you host configures your website. You need to ask them, there may be a file in your site folder that can be customised for this purpose.

Thanks Temi

I have sent them a message to find out if they provide a tool that will allow this, but i'm sure I have seen scripts around that can be implemented.

Yes, but for any script to work, your host needs to support it because durring maintenace, the server hosting your site may has been taken offline completely in which case the script will not run in the first place.

Ahh, that makes sense.

Thanks

Will wait and see what the hosting provider comes back with

Host just got back to me. They don't provide a tool that can setup a customise message. I will have to try and find one from somewhere on the Internet, set it up and wait until the site goes down

Does anyone know of a script that I can test?

Thanks

I got back to them to find out what type of script/tool their server supported or if any would do the job

The reply was:

"It's not possible to do this. It's not feasible to do this if the website will be down only for a short time - our attention would be better spent getting it working again."

Get a 2nd server to ping your 1st server at regular intervals, if there is a failure then update the DNS records to point to your 2nd server. Might take a while to update.

A colleague used to host his own site (back in the old days) but had a dynamic IP address, so everytime he connected his script would update things for him.

I wouldn't know where to start though, and ISP/hosts out there probably will.

Humous

Change hosts. Downtime in this day and age is wholly unacceptable. My server has been down for PLANNED changes for 30 minutes in the last 4 years.