Provide README for Maintenance Helper

Hi! Thanks for the quick response.

I did and do not really know the level of advancement that a dev module has, not being a developer myself. Please bear with me. I look at it more from a user's point of view. It is also the first issue I report about since I am sure of it. There are many I do not really know ;)

I tried to do this with the current description. If some part of it seems lacking, please expand.

Mm, I'll give it a try. It could read something like:
" * You want to perform maintenance on your site that may cause errors, but instead of showing the usual message that site is offline preventing users from accessing it, you still want users to be able to read the site."

- adding to the default message shown some reference to the fact that it is put there by the module.

I don't think it makes sense to add to the message any information about the source of the message.
The message is shown to end users who usually don't know about modules and can't do anything with
the information. It would help with debugging, but it is not a good error message from a usability standpoint.

All right. Yes, I understand. I installed the module together with a bunch of others. Probably it is not a good way to do it and also I did not do it on a test site, true. The reason for my suggestion is that I was not able to find anywhere yet the default message used. So I had no idea where the problem came from. Mentioning maintenance_helper, or even just maintenance, would have given me a clue and pointed me in the right direction.
Also, if my users had been able to login but not edit or contribute content that would have given away some indication of where the trouble was.

- instead of the default hard-coded message some switch to be able to de-/activate it.

Visit admin/settings/maintenance_helper where you can do exactly that. See also http://drupal.org/files/images/maintenance_helper.png which is now on the project page.

Yes but it is not activating the message or not, it is activating and deactivating the actual module that I refered to. It may seem useless to you but if one tries it and for some reason it doesn't work yet one could deactivate it in the same config page. I guess you take for granted that admins are to do that in the modules page. I expected to find that in the config and I am probably wrong on this.

- the default message should inform of what is happening. After all, once it is workig properly the message can be changed.

Same as above reasoning about the context of the user.

The message "Sorry, you do not have the permission to login at this time" threw me. I had no idea what was wrong. I went looking for wrong permissions, emptying caches, clearing cookies and that.
Is it not more important for the module to not create confusion while it is in development? Not that much trouble for a few users to actually see "(maintenance being carried out.)", is it? At least until the module reaches a more stable stage.

The module absolutely needs a README.txt that talks about granting people the permission to login and the location of the settings page. I'll try to get that shortly.

Yes, absolutely. I think it should address the main question: ¿Does one activate the Helper instead of putting the site offline, does one activate it and then put the site offline or does one activate it and it takes care of putting a meaningful message, custom or not, for users to see?

I probably do not see most aspects of the implications of this module, do not address properly what I see as problems and certainly do not know the problems involved in solving the bugs ;) I just mention what confused me and that took me a long time to figure out.

Thank you for explaining, Greg. Newbies are like this ;) I'll be on the look out for updates and give more feedback if it is useful.