A client of mine insists that his site be closed for Shabbat, the Jewish sabbath each week, which occurs from Friday before sunset to Saturday after sunset.
This is for religious reasons, and not something he's willing to debate with me. There are a lot of nuances here, I'm personally against his reasoning, but none of it matters, as currently the only option the client will consider is to serve some kind of "closed for shabbat" splash page.
As far as I can see, my options are:
*serve a 503 response with a "closed for shabbat" splash page for any requests.
*302 redirect all requests to a "closed for shabbat" splash page.
*Client is not willing to only disable the shopping cart.
Is there some other approach/option?
What seems like it will do less damage to the site in terms of Google over an extended period of time - a 302 or a 503 HTTP response?
Does anyone have experience with serving a 503 once a week for an extended period of time?
My two main concerns are Google thinking the site is technically crap, since it is down once a week and negative site usability parameters, since I'll have a 100% bounce, low time on site, and pogosticking back to the SERPs for about 15% of each week.
