How to create an “Under Construction” page

You may have seen “Under Construction” pages used across the Internet. They’re simple landing pages that inform users that the web site being viewed is currently being worked on and providing basic contact information should the user need to get in touch with the site owner. Typically, the Under Construction page is displayed instead of regular pages on the site, which may not be in the correct state for public consumption.

Follow these steps to create a customized Under Construction page for your website, or go to this article if you prefer to use a template for a simple site.

Open a text editor (such as Notepad in Windows or TextEdit in Mac OS) or a HTML editor such as Adobe Dreamweaver, and create a file with the following code.

<!doctype html>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>Under Construction</title>
<p>This page is under construction. Please return later.</p>


HTML editor

Save the file as “under-construction.html” or something similar.

Use an FTP client or cPanel File Manager in your HostPapa Dashboard to upload the file to the top-level, document root for your domain. For example, /home/myaccount/public_html.

cPanel File Manager

Now create a .htaccess file in the same directory, with the following code.

DirectoryIndex under-construction.html index.html index.php

To learn more about creating .htaccess files, please read the following HostPapa knowledge base article: What is .htaccess?

Your “Under Construction” will now be displayed whenever someone tries to access your website. Once your work on the site is complete, simply remove the DirectoryIndex line from the .htaccess file to restore full access to the site.



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