Through this relatively unknown simple technique, you can instantly take down a .NET web app so you can do maintenance etc.
Simply put a file called App_Offline.htm in the root of the web server and .NET will detect it, and stop processing any requests. All it will do instead is serve the contents of this file – great for doing site maintenance whilst showing a friendly message to the user.
One thing to bare in mind is the fact that it needs to be at least 512 bytes in size otherwise you will get a page not found error in IE. (Just add in a whole load of comments to bulk up the size if need be).
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