"deny from all" with a custom message?

Question

I'm moving to a new server and want to take all of my sites offline during the transition. I know I can put this in my root .htaccess file to block people from visiting the site:

order deny,allow
deny from all 

But I want to also output a message explaining why the site is down. Is this possible?

Answer 1

Try adding a:

ErrorDocument 403 /special_message.html

where the /special_message.html is the file that contains your message.

Answer 2

you can add a message directly from .htaccess file, eg:

ErrorDocument 403 "Account Suspended"

I think last quote is optional too.