Working on extensive changes isn’t the only reason you should consider activating maintenance mode. I’ve listed some additional cases where it might be necessary. If at all possible, you should avoid maintenance mode altogether. However, as you’ll learn below sometimes it is unavoidable.
I would hope the very first thing that a web design company would do after finishing a site for a client is to run a speed test. It’s one thing to have an amazing looking site. It’s quite another to have that website load quickly and without any hiccups. As a designer, there has to be a balance between aesthetics, speed, and the needs of your client. Having a widget that affects loading time, for instance, should be taken into consideration. Is it necessary? Will it have value to your visitors?
As an avid user of yoast on all of the WordPress sites I’ve built, I’ve been pretty impressed with just how efficient and organized the plugin is. When I read the news about this bug, it was shocking on a few different levels. For one, the Yoast team has always been thorough with the features they offer and introduce. Having an option inadvertently reset to a potentially harmful setting just didn’t seem possible. Alas, accidents happen.
Having researched all of these six plugins (WP Product Review Pro, All in One Schema Rich Snippets, WP Review Pro, Rich Reviews, WP Customer Reviews, Site Reviews), I can definitely vouch for one of them. Site Reviews may have a small install base, but as a free plugin, it is a great way to collect reviews and display them as a combined rich snippet. Normally, I would dismiss reviews on a company’s own website, but the benefits of having an attractive review schema displayed on that page in Google should not be ignored.