# Excluding the Control Panel from Maintenance Mode

Keep the Control Panel reachable while Laravel maintenance mode is on — add CP routes to the allow list.

## Overview

When your site is in Laravel's [maintenance mode](https://laravel.com/docs/configuration#maintenance-mode), a custom view will be displayed for all requests into your site. This makes it easy to "disable" your site while it is updating or when you are performing maintenance. The logic for this mode is handled in the default middleware.

To enable maintenance mode, run the `down` Artisan command:

``` shell
php artisan down
```

And to disable maintenance mode, run the reverse `up` Artisan command:

``` shell
php artisan up
```

## Excluding URLs

It's possible to specify URLs that should remain "up" while your application is in maintenance mode. For most applications, you can define these in your app's `bootstrap/app.php` file:

```php
return Application::configure(basePath: dirname(__DIR__))
    ->withRouting()
    ->withMiddleware(function (Middleware $middleware) { // [tl! focus]
        $middleware->preventRequestsDuringMaintenance(except: [ // [tl! focus]
            '/cp*' // [tl! focus]
        ]); // [tl! focus]
    }) // [tl! focus]
```

In this example, the Control Panel will be available while the rest of your application is "down".

:::hint
For older applications, without the `Application::configure()` API in the `bootstrap/app.php` file, you can instead define exclusions in the `app/Http/Middleware/PreventRequestsDuringMaintenance.php` file:

```php
protected $except = [
    '/cp*'
];
```
:::