Shutting down with App_Offline.htm

Here’s a handy trick for temporarily shutting down your ASP.NET 2.0 site, maybe when performing maintenance or deploying an update.

Create a new HTML file containing a suitable message, rename it App_Offline.htm, then put it in your application’s webroot. This will cause the website’s application domain to be shut down, and any subsequent requests will return App_Offline.htm instead of the requested page.

When you’re finished, just delete or rename the App_Offline.htm file.