View site in maintenance mode as “Visitor”

Hi,
Just documenting a little problem I had, that could perhaps be of use to others. I am building a site with user roles with different permissions and this plugin is a godsend. You can switch between user roles and test your site.

But since I am also using a Coming soon plugin to restrict access to logged in users only since the site is being built. I am using the Coming Soon Page, Under Construction & Maintenance Mode by SeedProd
https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/coming-soon/

Up until this evening I couldn’t test as a visitor (not logged in), because of the Coming soon being activated. So I contacted the author of View Admin As plugin and he found a way that I could browse the site as “Visitor” (in reality logged in as administrator) without triggering the coming soon lockdown page. This is how. You need FTP access to your site server.

1. Via FTP create a new directory in wp-content called mu-plugins.
For additional reading: https://www.ads-software.com/support/article/must-use-plugins/

2) Create a php file in that directory and name it vaa-cs.php

3) Add this code:

<?php

add_filter( 'seed_csp4_get_settings', function( $settings ) {
    if ( ! is_admin() && did_action( 'vaa_view_admin_as_do_view' ) ) {
        $settings['status'] = 0; // Disable Coming Soon page if view is active.
    }
    return $settings;
} );

Please note: This will work only with Coming Soon Page, Under Construction & Maintenance Mode by SeedProd
https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/coming-soon/
and this plugin “View admin as”
https://www.ads-software.com/support/plugin/view-admin-as/

A big thanks to Jory!

• This topic was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by Argentum.