Holidays
Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, the Fourth of July. Close for the day and open on time.
Product WordPress plugin
Close the store on schedule. Keep your rankings.
Thanksgiving, a year-end inventory count, a family weekend, a maintenance window. The plugin closes your store at the time you set, tells search engines you’ll be back, and opens again on its own with a fresh cache.
Updated November 2026
What shoppers seeyourstore.com
We’re closed for Thanksgiving.
Thanks for stopping by. Orders open again Friday morning, and everything in the store will be right where you left it.
Back Fri, Nov 27 at 9:00 AM ETWhat Google seesHTTP response
HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable Retry-After: Fri, 27 Nov 2026 14:00:00 GMT Cache-Control: no-store # temporary: come back at reopening time
Fig. 01 Why it matters
The usual ways of closing a store can cost you rankings.
Search engines keep crawling while you’re closed. What they find decides whether your pages are still there when you reopen.
| How the store closes | What search engines see | What can happen to rankings |
|---|---|---|
| A “we’re closed” page that returns 200 OK | A thin page in place of your products and categories | Pages can be re-indexed with the closed message, or flagged as soft 404s |
| Unpublishing products or redirecting to the homepage | 404 errors or redirects | Pages drop out of the index and have to earn their way back |
| A generic maintenance plugin | It depends on the plugin. Often no reopening time, and no cache purge afterward | Crawlers guess when to return, and early visitors may see the closed page after you reopen |
| AMAGID scheduled closing | 503 Service Unavailable with Retry-After set to your reopening time | Treated as a temporary closure. The cache is purged on reopen, so the open store is what gets served. |
Fig. 02 When stores use it
Built for the days your store needs to rest.
Set a closure once, or set it to repeat. The store closes and reopens on time whether or not anyone is at a computer.
Inventory counts
Stop orders while you count, so stock in the store matches what’s on the shelf when you reopen.
Family-run shops
Close on weekends, for a family event or for a week off, without turning off the website by hand.
Maintenance
Pause orders for a migration or a big update, then reopen with a fresh cache and nothing half-saved.
Fig. 03 The settings
One screen in your WordPress admin.
Add a closure, write what shoppers should read, and choose what happens on reopen. The search engine side is handled for you.
Scheduled closing
Open now · next closing Thu, Nov 26ClosuresOne-off and repeating. Times are in your store’s time zone.
- NameTypeClosedStatus
- Thanksgiving DayHolidayThu, Nov 26, 12:00 AM → Fri, Nov 27, 9:00 AMNEXT
- Christmas DayHolidayFri, Dec 25, 12:00 AM → Sat, Dec 26, 9:00 AMSCHEDULED
- Year-end inventory countInventoryThu, Dec 31, 6:00 PM → Sat, Jan 2, 9:00 AMSCHEDULED
- SundaysWeeklyEvery Sunday, 12:00 AM → Mon, 9:00 AMREPEATS
- Server maintenanceMaintenanceThu, Jan 14, 1:00 AM → 3:00 AMSCHEDULED
While closedWhat shoppers read on every page
{closure_name} and {reopen_time} fill in from the closure.
Search enginesSet for you, so rankings are protected
Response code
503 Service Unavailable
On reopenSo the first visitor sees the open store
Design concept with sample settings. The live plugin’s screens may differ.
- ScheduleHolidays, inventory counts, weekends and maintenance windows, one-off or repeating.
- MessageYour words on every page, with the reopening time filled in.
- 503 + Retry-AfterSearch engines are told the closure is temporary and when to come back.
- Fresh reopenThe cache is purged the moment the store opens again.
Fig. 04 How a closure runs
From the schedule to a fresh reopen.
- 01
You schedule it
Pick the dates and times, or a repeating rule, and write the message shoppers will see.
- 02
The store closes
At closing time, shoppers see your message, orders pause and the store answers with a 503.
- 03
Crawlers wait
Every response carries Retry-After with your reopening time, so search engines know when to return.
- 04
The store reopens
At reopening time the cache is purged and the store serves normal pages again.
Fig. 05 FAQ
Questions store owners ask about closing.
Tell us how your store is set up, and we’ll tell you whether the plugin fits.
Ask about the pluginWill my rankings drop while the store is closed?
A 503 with Retry-After is the standard way to tell search engines a closure is temporary, and it’s built for closures of hours or a few days. If you plan to close for longer than that, talk to us first, because search engines may start treating a long 503 as a real outage.
What do shoppers see?
Your own closed message on every page, with the reopening time filled in. Orders pause until the store opens again.
Does it work with my cache or CDN?
On reopen the plugin purges the cache, so the first visitors get the open store and not a cached closed page. Tell us your caching setup and we’ll confirm it’s covered before you rely on it.
Can a closure repeat?
Yes. Set one-off closures such as a holiday or an inventory count, and repeating ones such as every Sunday.
How do I get it?
Ask us on a strategy call. We install and configure it on your store with you, and it’s maintained by the engineers who built it.
Last step Your move
Hand usthe noise.
We’re a fit for businesses that invest in digital every month and want one team holding the whole picture. Not sure you’re there yet? Ask us. You’ll get a straight answer.
- Google Partner
- Meta Business Partner