Hello, My Forum recently had an hour of being put into Read Only mode which was unexpected and nothing to do with the Forum Admin team, and there’s now been some discussion on my Forum around read-only mode, with some members thinking that we’re restricting access to the Forum without notifying people, which isn’t the case. They’ve shared this document which seems to show that only Forum admin can put the Forum in read only mode, but I know for sure that none of our Admin are using this function at all. Is it possible that Discourse are doing this as part of any maintenance? Is there another reason why Read Mode would be activated without the Forum Admin doing so? I’m fairly new to the platform so I’d be so grateful for any advice.

:wave: Jenny [image] Jenny: Discourse are doing this If you are hosted by Discourse this could be possible (example). But I would assume they would let the admin know when it was going to take place. If not then I’m not sure what would cause it since only admins can enable/disable it. [image] Jenny: They’ve shared this document Who is they?

Thanks @ondrej - I’ll take a look at the link. By “they” I mean one of my Forum members :slight_smile: I’ve checked our admins and only two of us have been active for some time, and I know it’s not my colleague, so I’m keen to understand what’s going on!

I just checked, and there’s no actions logged under read only mode!

This can happen occasionally if there is maintenance on your server, or if it encounters issues. If you’re hosted by us I can look into this further and see if I can find out what the issue might be?

Was there high traffic? The site can go into a read only mode if the server is overwhelmed.

Read Only mode occurring when not scheduled by admin

Product Support

Moin June 27, 2024, 11:55am 4

Have you checked the staff action logs at YOURSITE/admin/logs/staff_action_logs?

Topic		Replies	Views
This site is in read only mode Product Support	2	295	April 25, 2025
Read Only Modes in Discourse Site Management how-to , explanation , read-only	11	2822	May 1, 2026
Login disabled in read only mode Product Support	1	311	January 16, 2025
What happens when I enable read-only mode? Product Support read-only	4	709	February 15, 2021
Disable Read-Only Product Support free-plan	4	218	September 2, 2026

Read Only mode occurring when not scheduled by admin

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