Alternative to 'Down For Maintenance' ?

As i run my website myself I need to take it offline/down for maintenance when ill or taking a few days off - is there an alternative to doing this? For example can I leave the website online so people can view the products, links, info etc but cannot proceed through checkout?

Any help appreciated as I need to take the site offline for a week and trying to avoid using down for maintenance again.

Thanks

Sorry, after browsing the forum for ages with no luck I posted the above question and then after a look on another site I found the solution and it's so simple I can't believe I had not noticed it before! Instead of removing this post I will update so others know how to do this too - Go to Admin>Configuration>Customer Details>Customer Shop Status-View Shop and Prices. From there you can choose to show prices only when logged in or to hide all prices etc, or, in my case to put the store into 'Showroom Mode' so people can view the site but cannot checkout :)

You could switch it to a display only store in the Configuration ... My Store ...

Quote:

---

Store Status
What is your Store Status
0= Normal Store
1= Showcase no prices
2= Showcase with prices

---

then you might add a message to the main page about why it is not available for shopping in the Tools ... Define Pages Editor ... on the define_main_page ...

REMOVED: *** beaten to the punch line ***

Thanks Ajeh, just found the store status one too - very handy little features :)

Only problem is when I change Store Status it shows links to 'contact us' underneath each product - is there a way to change this as it links to the default contact us page (don't use) instead of the ez page contact us one we created.

Thanks and I have been reminded yet again not to trust anything my ex hubby told me about zencart as he would say "it's impossible" just to avoid doing something lol

You could try customizing the function zen_get_buy_now_button in the file:
/includes/functions/functions_general.php

and change the return code for the section:

Code:

---

// show case only superceeds all other settings
    if (STORE_STATUS != '0') {
      return '<a href="' . zen_href_link(FILENAME_CONTACT_US) . '">' .  TEXT_SHOWCASE_ONLY . '</a>';
    }

---

to return the link that you want to use ...

Thanks Ajeh - I have now managed to change the link location which is great, but I cannot find the Contact Us text anywhere on that php page to change the text (was intending to link to the announcements page which say's why the site is offline). If I use developers toolkit to find Contact Us it brings up lots of pages none of which appear to be for this function. Alternatively if I use the Customer Status option and change this to Showroom Only, I also cannot find the place to change this text. I would appreciate if you can point me in the right direction (again) - thanks.

Sorry it wont let me edit last post but I have found the location where I change the Showroom, showcase or contact us text. if anyone else has the same problem it's in the english.php file :)