title: maintenance.flag file usage
body: <p>When I first started using Magento and I first made a backup, I ticked the &quot;put website into maintenance mode&quot; button. Once this was done when I tried to visit my site I was given a 503 error (I think). I found that this was due to Magento creating a <code>maintenance.flag</code> file.</p>
  <p>I've come to understand that this is used to stop people accessing your site when you are updating things or backing up.</p>
  <p>Is it possible to use a <code>maintenance.flag</code> file to block people from visiting your site while you're physically updating and checking? I have 2 servers a test and a live server. The live server uses SSL and is much faster than the free testing server that I have. Currently I'm developing changes on the test server and then uploading to the live server once I know it al works and looks OK.</p>
  <p>Since we applied the SSL to the live server. Certain things are (or are not) happening when I do updates. I'm wondering if I can temporarily block access to my site while I check my updates then allow people back on.</p>
  <p>The <code>maintenance.flag</code> file blocks me out of my site as well so as far as I can understand what I want to do is not possible.</p>