Geeklog Maintenance Plugin

Maintenance 1.1.1 provides a small, standalone maintenance mode for Geeklog.

Requirements

• Designed for PHP 5.6 and later
• Geeklog 2.1.1 or later, reviewed through Geeklog 2.2.2

How it works

Geeklog loads active plugin functions.inc files near the end of lib-common.php, after session and permission initialization and before the requested script. The plugin uses this common loading point to stop requests before page rendering.

When enabled, blocked requests receive 503 Service Unavailable, anti-cache headers and a configurable Retry-After value. The public standalone template contains no login form or login link. GET access to users.php and the normal admin login page remains blocked.

Authorized operators can use the separate URL admin/plugins/maintenance/login.php. On Geeklog 2.2.x, this page reuses the native Geeklog authentication template and login-form plugin hooks, including Captcha/recaptcha integrations supplied through the standard loginform hooks. On older supported Geeklog releases it falls back to the plugin's standalone login template while still delegating credential verification to Geeklog.

Only this page and a login POST with the expected fields are allowed while the site is blocked. Users with maintenance.admin bypass maintenance mode.

The login URL is intentionally absent from the public maintenance page, but it must not be treated as a secret authentication factor. Security still depends on Geeklog account credentials, login throttling and the maintenance.admin permission.

The configured maintenance message is plain text and is HTML-escaped before rendering.

Installation and configuration

Install through Geeklog's Plugin Administration page. Installation creates the permission, Maintenance Mode Admin group, Configuration API values, and an optional warning block assigned to all topics. Configure it in Command & Control

Configuration > Maintenance. The mode is disabled by default.

Configuration includes:

• maintenance mode on/off;
• the plain-text visitor message;
• the Retry-After delay returned with HTTP 503 responses.

The plugin also adds a Maintenance entry to Command and Control. Its small administration page shows the current state, documents the request policy and contains a POST button opening the native Geeklog configuration screen. Deploy admin/index.php and admin/login.php under public_html/admin/plugins/maintenance/, following the standard Geeklog plugin layout. The page displays the dedicated login URL and can send it to the email address of the currently authenticated Geeklog account. This action is protected by Geeklog's CSRF token.

Block installation is idempotent, resolves database IDs dynamically, and uses schema detection for installations where blocks.tid exists. During an upgrade, existing Maintenance blocks have their executable name/type/function fields repaired while their enabled state, placement and permissions are preserved.

Upgrade from 1.0.0 or 1.1.0

Replace the files and use Geeklog's normal plugin update action. The upgrade hook updates metadata, adds the Retry-After setting when missing, and creates or repairs the block and topic assignment. Uninstall/reinstall is not required.

Version 1.1.1 changes

• Uses Geeklog's native authentication template and loginform hooks on Geeklog 2.2.x, improving compatibility with Captcha/recaptcha integrations.
• Adds configurable Retry-After values.
• Adds Cache-Control, Pragma and X-Robots-Tag headers to blocked responses.
• Repairs executable fields of an existing Maintenance warning block on upgrade.
• Emits valid HTML language codes instead of Geeklog language filenames.
• Hardens direct-access checks for contexts where PHP_SELF is unavailable.
• Corrects French administration wording.

Uninstall

Geeklog removes configuration, feature, group, and PHP block. The plugin first removes the block's topic assignments because supported Geeklog versions do not cascade them when deleting PHP blocks.

Limitation

The check covers endpoints that load lib-common.php, including normal core, plugin, static page, search and feed requests. A standalone endpoint that never loads lib-common.php needs separate web-server or application protection.

The dedicated Maintenance login endpoint supports Geeklog's standard username and password authentication. Sites configured exclusively for external or remote authentication should keep an authorized standard administrator account available for maintenance operations or provide separate server-level access controls.

License: GNU GPL version 2 or later. See LICENSE.