"opt out of everyone" with a special message?

Question

I am switching to a new server and want to disable all my sites during the transition. I know that I can put this in my root .htaccess file to block people from visiting the site:

order deny,allow deny from all 

But I also want to display a message explaining why the site is down. Is it possible?

Answer 1

Try adding:

 ErrorDocument 403 /special_message.html 

where /special_message.html is the file containing your message.