I've seen a number of sites just today with the "Under Construction" message.
Thankfully, none showing the animated gif of a stick man.
Is there a renaissance in the "Under Construction" message?
lucy24
7:04 pm on Nov 6, 2014 (gmt 0)
Any chance your favorite sites all live on a host that's been performing major server changes? If it's done on the host level, the site's carefully crafted custom 5xx pages probably can't be shown and the host has to show something.
engine
8:45 pm on Nov 6, 2014 (gmt 0)
These were all sites I'd never been to before, and they were not server generated, but were actually on the site's page.
RedBar
3:12 pm on Nov 8, 2014 (gmt 0)
Is there a renaissance in the "Under Construction" message?
I've also noticed that this past few months. I've actually contacted a couple of them in my widget industry to ask why? One said they were about to launch their new site, yep it has been, the other said that they had derived no business from their site since they had no visitors when they did have one and all it did was cost them web agency money.
Essex_boy
5:13 pm on Nov 8, 2014 (gmt 0)
Under Construction ! Id forgotten about that not seen it in years
lucy24
8:37 pm on Nov 8, 2014 (gmt 0)
Well, you could do some rudimentary snooping into the site's server and see if they all live at the same place. "Under Construction" sounds like a host's boilerplate page for any site that has a DNS record pointing to their server, but no actual pages yet. It would be a page with some particular name-- I forget what mine uses, because I tend to delete the file as soon as my own material goes up-- and then you put that name at the end of the DirectoryIndex list.
What's been puzzling me is how you get to these sites in the first place. Can't be from search engines, and can't be from following links-- unless by weird coincidence all sites on a given subject went through the same server changes at the same time.
ken_b
9:48 pm on Nov 8, 2014 (gmt 0)
Under Construction / Coming Soon are fairly common in the niche I've been perusing recently.
Mostly they appear to be pages on semi/partially developed websites where the site owner hasn't gotten around to uploading content or the developer is still waiting for the content to be forwarded to them for uploading.
Some appear to have been waiting for years. But homepages and some other pages on these sites seem to be current.
I guess these would be more like empty template pages rather than pure "under construction" pages.
RedBar
7:01 pm on Nov 9, 2014 (gmt 0)
What's been puzzling me is how you get to these sites in the first place.
Sometimes when checking outgoing links from my widget trade directory site, sometimes when checking for possible domain names for registering and sometimes when a site has just been removed but is still in the serps...next time it happens I'll take note of it!
tangor
12:58 am on Nov 10, 2014 (gmt 0)
The ones I've seen recently are more accurate:
"PLACE HOLDER: Content not yet published for this topic/category. If you would like to be notified of publication, please leave your contact information here." (and a link to an email collection form)
No stick man, animated or not, though the rest of the page is template solid with the rest of the site.
There have been a few times I've laid framework for known to come articles, etc. and plastered a "Coming Soon!" gif and appropriate text... but I also gave a date certain when that content would appear... and never missed that self-imposed deadline.
Depending on the site I don't see a problem with this as it does make sense to have the framework in place (think sticks nailed to build a house) as an outline of what is to be done.
engine
12:55 pm on Nov 10, 2014 (gmt 0)
Most of these sites were found via search looking for other information. The correct page was served by the search engine, however, when going to another page on the site the "under construction" message was on that page itself. It was not served automatically, it was text someone placed on the page.
I remember some time back that it became a no-no to have an "under construction" message, and rightly so.
Perhaps it's regaining acceptance in the Web 2.0
lucy24
4:49 pm on Nov 10, 2014 (gmt 0)
Did the no-no pertain to the exact words "Under Construction"? Or just to the idea of linking to a page that hasn't actually been built yet?
On a big, big site, designers and developers might be different people, each following their own course at slightly different paces. So here an orphaned page, there a placeholder. Smaller sites really have no excuse.
But if you find an "Under Construction" while randomly looking up possible domain names, that's pretty clearly a generic placeholder for something they've no intention of ever developing. It's just so the automated tools will report it as "Active website".
These were responses at the original URL, right? Not an alternative Soft 404: "We don't yet have a page called gfsjkl43oifv.html but it's coming right up, any day now, oh yeah you betcha."
