title: How to handle SharePoint deployment of wsp? Take site offline?
body: <p>What is the recommended approach to handle a SharePoint deployment via a WSP? During the deployment of the WSP the web site returns an HTTP 503 Service Unavailable response. I am doing the WSP deployment with a series of stsadm.exe commands from a bat file.</p>
  
  <p>I know I can probably drop an app_offline.htm file in the virtual directory folder and put up a customized HTTP 503 error code page, but is there a better way to take a SharePoint application offline during a deployment? Do I even need an app_offline.htm file or just a custom HTTP 503 error code page?</p>