For my next project I will use automatic deployments with git. I can run a shellscript before and after deployment. Is it possible to set "maintenance" automatically with shell?
In my .htaccess then I would check if a server variable is set to deployment or not to do the rewrite to maintenance?
Is this possible and how should I handle this?
You could have the .htaccess check for the existence of a file with a certain name, and if it exists, redirect to a static "please hold" page. Then, in your before script, to put the site into maintenance mode, you just touch the file. In your after script, rm it.
Example:
RewriteCond /path/to/maintmode -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ maintpage.htm?frompage=$1 [L]
So, to put your app in maintenance mode, do:
touch /path/to/maintmode
To restore to live mode:
rm /path/to/maintmode