If you want to do maintenance on the Web site, you can take it offline. This shuts the process down that is running the Web ...

If you want to do maintenance on the Web site, you can take it offline. This shuts the process down that is running the Web site so that the site no longer serves pages. You can then edit pages or other files without the possibility that a page will be requested while you are in the middle of your edits, potentially resulting in an error. Taking an application offline is also useful, if you are working with SQL Server Standard edition and want to swap or add an .mdf database file to the application. If the application is running, it cannot attach to new .mdf files.