Free Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode WordPress Plugin

SoonZip is a one-file WordPress plugin that puts your site behind a beautiful "coming soon" or "maintenance" page — without the page-builder bloat and constant upsells the popular plugins in this space are known for.

It gets the SEO detail right, which most free options don't: Coming Soon mode serves HTTP 200 so search engines can index your launch page, while Maintenance mode serves the correct 503 + Retry-After header so Google knows the downtime is temporary and doesn't de-rank you.

The page itself: dark gradient background (two color pickers + accent color), headline and multi-line message, an optional live countdown to your launch date, your logo, custom CSS — and a "notify me" e-mail form whose subscribers land in your own database table (viewable in the settings page, one-click CSV export, delete per row). No third-party service touches your list. Logged-in admins and editors always see the real site; everyone else can be let in with a secret preview link that sets a 24-hour bypass cookie. REST API, wp-cron, login and AJAX endpoints are never blocked, so nothing else on the site breaks.

1. Upload the soonzip folder to wp-content/plugins/ (or zip it and use Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin), then activate it. Activation creates one small subscribers table.

2. Open Settings → SoonZip. Pick the mode: Coming soon (visitors see the page, HTTP 200) or Maintenance (HTTP 503 + Retry-After for correct SEO).

3. Write your headline and message, optionally set the launch date for the countdown, adjust the three colors, paste a logo URL. Share the preview bypass link (shown on the settings page) with clients or teammates — it sets a 24h cookie. Subscribers appear at the bottom of the same page, with CSV export.

Deactivating the plugin instantly restores the site. Your subscriber list stays in the database.

Paste this prompt into Claude to build this exact product:

Build a production-quality WordPress plugin called SoonZip — coming soon & maintenance mode — as a SINGLE PHP file (one class, hooks in a static boot method). No Composer, no build step, no external services.

Modes: off / coming soon / maintenance. On template_redirect (priority 1), lock the site for visitors: coming soon renders the lock page with HTTP 200 (indexable), maintenance with HTTP 503 + Retry-After: 3600 and a robots noindex meta (correct SEO for temporary downtime). Never lock: logged-in users who can edit_posts, REST API requests, wp-login/wp-cron/admin-ajax, or anyone presenting the secret bypass key (?soonzip=KEY sets a hashed 24h cookie; compare with hash_equals). Send nocache headers on the lock page.

The lock page (rendered standalone, no theme dependency): dark gradient background between two configurable colors, accent color, optional logo, headline, multi-line message, an optional live countdown (days/hours/min/sec, vanilla JS, computed from the site-timezone launch datetime converted to UTC), and an optional "notify me" e-mail form. The form posts to admin-post.php with a nonce and a honeypot field; valid e-mails go into a dedicated {prefix}soonzip_subscribers table (unique e-mail, INSERT IGNORE); redirect back with a success or error flag rendered as a friendly note.

Settings page (Settings → SoonZip, manage_options + nonces on every action): mode radios with plain-language SEO explanations, headline, message, datetime-local launch field, e-mail form toggle, three color pickers, logo URL, editable bypass key (auto-generated on activation), custom CSS textarea (tag-stripped). Below the form: the subscriber list (newest first) with per-row delete, a total count, one-click CSV export (admin-post + nonce) and a "Preview page" button using the bypass link. Add a Settings link on the Plugins row. Sanitize every field on save (sanitize_text_field / sanitize_textarea_field / esc_url_raw / hex-color regex / sanitize_key), escape all output.

Activation hook: create the subscribers table with dbDelta-compatible SQL and seed default settings with a random bypass key. Target WordPress 5.8+ / PHP 7.4+. MIT license. Deliver the single plugin file with a proper plugin header.

What happened when we ran it: Claude produced the plugin in one file — 316 lines. We installed a fresh WordPress (7.1) on our test server with wp-cli and verified everything end-to-end: activation created the table; Coming Soon served 200 with the countdown and form; Maintenance served 503 with Retry-After: 3600; the bypass link showed the real site and its cookie persisted; a valid e-mail landed in the table exactly once (duplicate re-submission deduped by the unique key), while a honeypot-filled bot submission and an invalid address were both turned away. Zero revisions — it worked on the first activation.

Note: the download is the full, unrestricted plugin. The prompt is for reproducing (or remixing) the build yourself with your own Claude subscription.