Say a customer is an observant Jew and wants his site to be offline on Shabat - SEO problem?

Question

Someone here might have experience with this problem (it's not my personal problem and never has been):

Say you have a customer who is an observant Jew and he wants his site to be offline somehow (or at least online but unavailable for surfing) during Saturday - Shabat in Hebrew, Sabbath in English.

Is there a way to achieve this goal without causing SEO problem of any kind to the site?

---

The way I can think of is a full-screen Lightbox that will cover all the site with a small message, but might not actually hurt the SEO as the site itself will be online but without surfing.

Solution 1

Placing a website on a temporary hold should it be downtime for maintenance or for religious reasons will not harm your on-going SEO. It may however lower search results temporary until the website is backup, but obviously this should be expected, but long-term, no problem.

The tip to placing a website on hold temporary without any serious impact on SEO is to use the correct status code. In all scenarios its always best to return a HTTP header response of 503 (Service Unavailable). Preferably it's best to use 503 without using a 302 redirect first, this is because the bots will see the status of 302 before it detects the 503 (good point by w3dk).

This can be done either in the HTML, PHP or HTACCESS. Since the majority of answers currently cover various htaccess methods I thought I'd add a PHP method in case someone will prefer an alternative solution.

Setting Header 503 Status in PHP

$protocol = "HTTP/1.0";
if ( "HTTP/1.1" == $_SERVER["SERVER_PROTOCOL"] )
  $protocol = "HTTP/1.1";
header( "$protocol 503 Service Unavailable", true, 503 );
header( "Retry-After: 3600" );

The Retry-After is in seconds, so 3600 is 1 hour. If you need more downtime then simply change the number to whatever you require. Simply Google how many seconds in X hours.

Varnish and other caching setups

If using a Varnish or any other setup that caches HTML, then you will need to purge the cache for the changes to take place as headers are generally cached.

Solution 2

Check out how B&H Photo/Video handles this. They allow the site to remain active but inactivate the cart functions.

This handles the no work/commerce on the sabbath.

There will be an SEO issue if you deny access to the content.

Solution 3

Remind your customer that the webserver is not Jewish and doesn't need the day off to go to the local synagogue. The functions of the site can remain active and any incoming inquiries can simply wait until Monday. The customer's physical store can certainly turn everything off and thus will not be "doing business" on Shabbat.

If they really want it "offline" I would do a javascript function to cover the page with a "Closed today" layer rather than disabling the site. If you go that route, also remind the customer that "Saturday" also has to have a timezone attached. Your Saturday morning is someone else's Friday evening.

Solution 4

I haven't thought about this before. But I believe it will probably hurt your SEO but might not if you do it right. You will need to make sure to retrieve a "503 Service Unavailable" http header status, for. Then make sure to tell google or other bots to comeback in X time. To do this you need to create a php file with the script to create a header with the appropiate instructions I will do something like this:

• 1) Create a 503-http-status.php page
• 2) In that page insert the headers information with a php script to tell google to comeback in XX:XX:XX time
• 3) Make sure to write the .htaccess every 7 days or Saturdays with instructions to direct traffic to your 503-http-status.php page. Something like this:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^111\.111\.111\.111
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/503-http-status.php$ [NC]
RewriteRule .* /503-http-status.php [R=302,L]

Solution 5

Removing the website during one day will hurt SEO, but not as much. Depending on the traffic, some crawlers (the ones not scheduled to visit your site during Sabbath) won't even notice. But it will hurt for the users and for the others.

Putting a lightbox or a javascript code is not the best solution either, because it can be bypassed/disabled easily.

One solution is to set a server-side routine that changes the main page to a "closed for Sabbath" version, with the main controls disabled.

But your customer is going too far. From what was gathered in judaism.SE, there is little problem to leave automated systems run during the Sabbath, as long as they don't interact with the people observing Sabbath.

So a more sensible option is to leave the site running, and just disable automated notifications (email, sms, app) to the owners, and/or disable either the user login page or the shopping cart. This way users won't be able to "shop" during Sabbath.

But you can Tell your customer there is no problem on leaving the website on, even if it is E-commerce.

From judaism.stackexchange:

The Torah says you need to let your animals rest; what about your machinery? ("Shvisas keilim"). We follow Beis Hillel that it's not a problem, so your server can go on doing whatever it was doing.

There's also the problem of doing business on shabbos. A more complicated case is leaving my online store open on Shabbos (then after shabbos, you read the orders and ship them); Rabbi Heinemann shlit'a first prohibited this, but then reconsidered and allowed it. It's somewhat analogous to people putting envelopes in your mail slot; you deal with them after Shabbos.

(emphasis mine)

From another question:

http://www.shemayisrael.com/parsha/halacha/Issue7.pdf mentions that one can keep a vending machine open on shabbos, because the pay one is getting is paid "Behavlaah" (Though I don't understand why, unless we're dealing with a contractor). When one buys and sells through the internet, the transaction isn't finalized for a few days. Moreover, then it isn't "Schar Shabbos" because the work that one is getting paid for took place before Shabbos.

Credits to J for linking the questions in the comments above.

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Comments

[gerrit]

The website for a christian conservative political party as in The Netherlands is off-line on Sunday. The same is true for its newspaper. The entire page is replaced by a single message that they do not offer information on Sundays.

[nacer]

You might find useful advice, at least insofar as how the rules about what is and is not allowed can be interpreted, here : judaism.stackexchange.com/q/2799 , judaism.stackexchange.com/q/9304 , judaism.stackexchange.com/q/2671

[gerrit]

@Mindwin sgp.nl and reformatorischdagblad.nl. Try again when it's Sunday in Central European Time. This article from another newspaper is from 2003, but considering this party is rather conservative, I doubt they have changed their policy. This article in Dutch is specifically for webmasters/customers who wish to close their website on Sundays. It also lists a number of websites (all in Dutch) that close their websites on Sundays.

[bdsl]

Remember that Jewish days start and end at sunset, not midnight, so to do this correctly you may need code to calculate the time of sunset as understood by your customer or their rabbi.

[closetnoc]

While the site owner is Jewish, the site is not. ;-) It is one thing that a non-observant site takes orders while an observant site owner not process the order until the sabbath is over.

[NiKiZe]

Shouldn't the server and everything else be turned off to be compliant, that goes for all electrical devices and machinery as well?

[LarsH]

Keep in mind that the customer may be just fine with getting less traffic in general (due to SEO "problem") because of shutting down the web site on the Sabbath. This is not to say there aren't win-win workarounds. Just understand that it may be more important to your observant customer to err on the side of observance if the boundaries are fuzzy, than to maximize legitimate SEO.

[Ian Ringrose]

Is it enough just not to process credit cards? After all I can sent a letter to a jew that arrives on the Sabbath to order goods, but provided he does not open it until the next day it is OK.

[Jeffiekins]

WHY DON"T ARGUE: While it's amusing to see people who don't understand Sabbath observance attempt to wrestle with aspects of it, unless you have read several books on the subject, you can't even hope to grasp your ignorance of the laws that have developed over 3,000+ years.

[Jeffiekins]

WHY ELSE: And there's an obvious case where this request is perfectly reasonable, regardless of any tech-based argument: if it's a website that is particularly likely to attract Jews, the author would be contributing to the violation of the Sabbath by the non-observant (similar to the idea of "attractive nuisance" in U.S. law), which is not permitted. I'd probably prefer to have it block if it's the Sabbath in the viewer's location (with IP geo-locating), but the author either has a good reason for his choice, or hasn't considered time zones (possible).

[dhaupin]

@Jeffiekins Why would Jews be surfing on Saturday anyways? Perhaps they aren't that devoutly Jewish at all, eh? IMO: A server is not capable of parsing human morality nor religion, nor is it Jewish, therefore it should not be allowed to "submit judgements" against humans who do parse religion, have morality, and are Jewish. If a Jewish person is on the site on Saturday, then it's their fault, not yours or the servers. I think that God would be a little perturbed that a computer is doing the judgements he should be slinging out to all these "sinners". So the only best answer is to shut it down.

[Admin]

@J... there's also What are the restrictions on electronic commerce during the sabbath? I'll point to B&H being a major site that is closed to processing orders on the Sabbath, but is still able to be browsed.

[Jeffiekins]

@dhaupin According to Jewish Law, it is not permitted to make it easier for another Jew to do something they're not supposed to do, regardless of whether (s)he accepts that the restriction applies to him/her. It doesn't seem like a difficult concept. It's one of the bazillion rules that an Orthodox person lives with. If you don't like those rules, that's understandable, and a discussion for another forum.

[kaay]

I will argue, that there are points that should not be merely dismissed. The answers should consider analogies to other things where a decision has been reached (or a conflict not even seen) - and some do, giving convincing reasons why the site should remain online, just with some features disabled.

[dotancohen]

Business should never be mixed with anything, but religion mixes with everything. Like it or not, this is not an uncommon request.

[Alexander]

Accepting an offer on his website is the same as if I would open the newspaper on Saturday, see his offer, and write him a proposal letter. I am not forbidden to write him a proposal letter on Saturday, because I am a goi. I certainly don't expect him to process it before Monday...

[MrWhite]

You shouldn't redirect to a 503 because the user-agent first sees the 302 status code, not a 503. See webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/55635/…

[MrWhite]

"Make sure to write the .htaccess every 7 days or Saturdays" - This could be automated in .htaccess with the %{TIME_WDAY} server variable (6 is Saturday). (Although I thought the Jewish Sabbath includes Friday evening, which complicates it somewhat.)

[MrWhite]

"Your Saturday morning is someone else's Friday evening." - But it is the site owner that is observing the Sabbath, not necessarily the customer (that's their business). In the same way a shop might close at 5pm - that's 5pm where the shop owner is located, not where the customer is located.

[Raul Reyes]

@w3dk you are right about the 302 status code. All I am saying is that you should retrieve 503 in headers information AND it was pretty obvious to me that you will not be writing to the htaccess file every 7 days manually

[Luaan]

@w3dk I think the point the OP was making is more like "make sure the customer knows when normal operation is restored" :) When I look at a website that forbids me access because it's Saturday, and I look at my calendar and see that it's actually Friday... I might be a bit confused :)

[MrWhite]

@Luaan There would seem to be some confusion between "customer" and "end-user". The "customer" in this context is the site owner (the customer/client of the web developer - as stated in the question), not the end-user of the website. "...also remind the customer that 'Saturday' also has to have a timezone attached." - you certainly wouldn't need to remind the end-user about "timezones". The end-user has presumably already been made aware of this with the "'Closed today' layer".

[Mindwin]

@WernerCD see the Q&A of judaism.SE linked by J in the question comments. Although not a consensus in the Judaic community, leaving a website running during Sabbath (and NOT checking it) is analogous to receiving mail on the mailbox. As long as you don't interact with it, the website routines aren't considered work.

[Nate Eldredge]

The first paragraph seems inappropriate. You're the customer's webmaster, not his rabbi, and you're in no position to instruct him as to what his religion does or does not require.

[LarsH]

"Should never mix business & religion" is a bit like saying "should never mix walking and talking." Of course they're going to mix. Business can't be excluded from religious life, nor vice versa.

[MrWhite]

"%{TIME_HOUR} < 9" - There should be no space between the < and > operator and the operand. This is also a lexicographical comparison and to help this the TIME_HOUR variable returns a two digit, zero prefixed, string. So, it should read: %{TIME_HOUR} <09. (The // comment should also be removed if you want a working example.)

[MrWhite]

If it's obvious to you then why not state that in your answer? It's not obvious to anyone reading your answer.

[Thorsten S.]

@w3dk Corrected.

[MrWhite]

(Sorry, not intending to be picky, but the line-end # comment will also trigger a 500 error in this context since the flags (3rd) argument is omitted. Strictly speaking, Apache only supports full line comments.) (+1)

[Daniel]

@WernerCD You may have heard that, but it is not universally accepted.

[Daniel]

@LarsH Especially in Judaism which has entire halakhic volumes about business.

[Daniel]

Also, @user61631, even if the webservers don't need to take the day off there is a consideration in Judaism about enabling Jews to violate the Sabbath laws. It is possible that one could be liable if a non-religious Jewish person browses one's website on Shabbat

[WernerCD]

@Daniel what about ANY religion is universally accepted? :)

[Thorsten S.]

@w3dk No problem, had already enough 500s exactly because of Apache's pickiness. You're welcome.

[Daniel]

@WernerCD Probably not a lot. That's my point. Just because this person answering this question (who may or may not even be Jewish) claims that the web servers don't need to take a break, that doesn't mean the OP's rabbi would tell him the same thing. The question takes for granted that the website owner wants his website to be down on Shabbat.

[Paŭlo Ebermann]

In this case of a planned downtime I would actually give the time until the website will be back (+ some random minutes, to avoid a self-caused DDOS). You should also put a human-readable text with this info into the result body.

[Stephen Ostermiller]

Wikipedia says: [B&H Photo] is owned by Herman Schreiber. Schreiber and many of the store's employees are observant Satmar Hasidic Jews who close the store on Shabbat, most Jewish holidays (except for Hanukkah, when business dealings are permitted), and Christmas. The website remains open, but orders are not taken or shipped between Friday evening and Saturday evening and on Jewish holidays.

[Fiasco Labs]

When you take religion seriously as a way of life, it affects everything you do, just ask my Mormon and Seventh Day Adventist friends and my Catholic ancestors. And closing your store one day a week isn't forcing your religion on anyone, in fact in the case of several very successful businesses I deal with, it merely gives the competition a fair chance. And it's merely doing what is done in Brick'n Mortar, we're not all pressed to kill ourselves going 24/7.

[Joshua]

If you take this path, firewall off ports 80 and 443 so the server really is down as far as crawlers are concerned. It's better to just disable the buy buttons, etc. instead with javascript and depend on the fact that bots don't execute javascript.

[dhaupin]

@Daniel How can a Jewish person be non religious, that's a paradox. Jewish = derived from Judaism = a religion. If one is not religious they can't be Jewish. As much as everyone thinks it's a word assimilated to locality or race, it's not. It's a religion, period. Sure they stuck together, but bound by religious doctrine/law instead of location or race. A Jewish person is Jewish because of Judaism. I don't understand why the world is confused by that and thinks they're a "race" locked to a "locality".

[Beofett]

@dhaupin That's really off-topic here, but the short answer is: "Jewish" is both a religious and ethnic identity, and the religious identity is defined by factors other than the actual beliefs of the individual. I was born Jewish. I do not consider myself religious. Yet since I was born Jewish, it is my understanding that according to the Jewish religion, I am Jewish, even though I am not religious. I do, however, consider myself ethnically Jewish. So, while I'm not willing to debate this here (see my off-topic comment, previously), I believe your comment is simply wrong.

[dhaupin]

Haha consult, consult, consult! Good point on the sundown aspect. Seems hard to predict that since much of the time/weather datapoints available for sunup and sundown times are only estimates.

[Daniel]

@dhaupin Judaism is not purely a religion. One could stop practicing and give up Judaism as a religion; however, if that person was born Jewish (or converted) Jewish law treats him as a Jew whether he wants to be or not. He might not care if he is sinning, but religious Jews cannot enable him to do things that violate halakha. Whether having a website running that he could browse on Shabbat falls into the category of enabling him to sin may or may not be true (that's not the topic of this SE site), but the question assumes that could be problematic and asks for solutions.

[LarsH]

Consulting with a rabbi is good, but make sure it's a rabbi whose word the customer accepts.

[user56reinstatemonica8]

+1 for a real life example. For a better customer experience, you might want to suggest something where customers can put orders into a queue, which isn't processed until the day ends. This way you're less likely to lose or frustrate customers who don't want to, forget to, or can't come back later. (whether the client wants to is of course their decision, but if they accept this compromise, it's much better for the customer)

[gnasher729]

I'd say "Consult with the customer" (assuming that the poster is not Jewish but the customer is, so the poster should do what the customer asks him to to). The customer obviously should consult a rabbi to be sure to get everything right.

[Thorsten S.]

@Daniel "but religious Jews cannot enable him to do things that violate halakha." I do not like the sound of this statement at all.

[Daniel]

@ThorstenS. Then you must not be a religious Jew. That's the Jewish understanding of the prohibition against "placing a stumbling-block before the blind."

[Thorsten S.]

@Daniel Ok, Iet's say I am an extremely liberal Jew. You know, those of Jewish ancestry, but who do not care at all about Jewish customs and religion. I do things that violate Halakha. What now ? Herem ?

[Daniel]

@ThorstenS. If someone is actually a Jew according to halakha (i.e. all of his female ancestors are Jewish), then violating halakha is a sin for that person. If that person is not religious, he probably doesn't care and most religious Jews won't worry too much about it either. That's between him and God. As a religious Jew, though, it becomes relevant to me when I become involved personally. Halakha dictates that I cannot enable a Jew to violate halakha because it is "placing a stumbling-block. " I'm concerned about myself violating halakha through enabling someone else to do so.

[Daniel]

@ThorstenS. Again, this isn't really on-topic for this site. This question could as easily have been asked about some other tiny religion that explicitly disallows the use of web servers on Tuesdays.

[Thorsten S.]

@Daniel I am reading currently the positions on lifnei iver on mi yodeya to get an understanding of its implications.

[Simon Hayter]

Please take your extend discussion into a private chat as comments are not intended for general chit chat or extended discussions. If you have questions regarding religious laws and tradition, or if you want to learn more about a region then I recommend you visit: The Judaism Stack, Christianity Stack or the Islam Stack.

[bdsl]

This isn't an answer to the question "Is there a way to achieve this goal without causing SEO problem of any kind to the site?"

[ispiro]

The pertinent part of the answer is to cover the site - won't this get penalized by your favorite search engine? (and BTW your answer is more or less suggested already by the OP.)

[wedstrom]

I'm not sure the fact that a lightbox or other JS solution can be easily bypassed. You might liken it to putting a closed sign on an insecure storefront. People can still "break in", but at that point it is on the customer. Actively stopping the ordering process makes sense in this case.

[Stephen Ostermiller]

As other comments here point out, accepting eCommerce orders on Shabbat could entice other Jews to be non-observant. Shutting down the shopping cart on Shabbat would prevent that.

[Wossname]

How about '451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons'

[kaay]

Everything can be bypassed. There is surely a sanity limit to the amount of inconvenience you are required to go through to prevent "making it easier for others". So someone has found a domain where a ban could be technologically enforced. Doesn't mean it makes sense to do so - the numerous arguments against it shouldn't just be dismissed as excuses. We are talking about an unattended process little different from a solar power plant - are those deactivated on Shabat? Are interest rates suspended?

[Mindwin]

@wedstrom I really think that turning off the shopping cart / checkout is the way to go IF the client cannot be convinced otherwise. You leave the catalog on (so people can browse - there is no "work" by your part even if they are browsing a physical store) and the cart reactivates come sunday. The lightbox is just there for the sake of a complete answer attempting to exaust all options.

[rom016]

@dhaupin The times being estimates are only the beginning of your troubles as it depends on your horizon, and is it based on the location of the owner, customers or server?

[Micheal Johnson]

@ThorstenS. "It is absolutely not your problem for SEO optimization if the customer demands that the website is down. Simply do if it is the customer's decision." Just make sure that the customer is properly informed regarding the potential impact that his decision may have on SEO and how this could affect his business. If he decides to go ahead anyway, then do so and if he complains about not getting enough business and/or a low SEO then he can look at the situation again.

[Micheal Johnson]

If the website is down for maintenance (planned or unplanned) and search engine bots are properly informed (in terms of status codes and headers) then that isn't going to affect your SEO, but if the bots determine that your website is routinely down at the same time every week for the whole day then that will likely affect your SEO because, in the bot operator's thinking, you're performing too much maintenance or your server is too unreliable.

[Micheal Johnson]

Good point. If the server crashes, fix it the next day. If someone contacts you through the server, let the server withhold the message until the next day. If the server's running on its own, then you aren't doing any work.

[Micheal Johnson]

Javascript is client side and if the customer is in any way knowledgeable of how this works he likely won't accept it. Not only is the server still running, but all that's needed is for a visitor to have Javascript disabled (surprisingly common) and they'll miss the Javascript message and still be able to access the site (which is exactly what the customer is trying to avoid).

[Micheal Johnson]

This isn't about the observance of the site's visitors; it's about the observance of the site's owner. The site owner does not want the server to be running on the Sabbath, no matter whether or not his visitors are observant. Whether the visitors attempt to browse his site on the Sabbath is their problem, not his.

[Thorsten S.]

@MichealJohnson I fully agree that you should inform him about the impact (in written form) and search for possibilities to lessen the impact. The problem is that the decision is not based on a rational optimization, but on a religious belief. So if it is not based on a rational decision in the first place, it will be very, very likely not swayed by rational counterarguments. Another thing is that trying to circumvent the impact may be considered an attempt to cheat by the rank algorithm. Oh, if you did not do it on purpose, your first name has "ea" instead of "ae".

[Miles Gillham]

My point is that the owner should consider that there is no strict requirement to disable the server and thus avoid the SEO implications entirely.

[Admin]

The observant-jew customer might say it's problematic if the servers owned by Jews and especially inside the holy land (Israel or/as-well Palestine) since it will cause Jews to act as "Mehalel Shabat" (what you can define as "desecrator of the Sabbath").

[Micheal Johnson]

It depends on what the owner and/or his rabbi believes to be observant. If he believes that it is necessary to turn his server (if it's actually his server, which we don't know for certain) off in order to be observant then the developer can't decide otherwise.

[Miles Gillham]

I'm revising my answer to accept that this may be still the only course of action.

[joosthoek]

+1 for a correct status 503 implementation. Your answer could be even better if you also made it send a Retry-After header indicating when the site will be available again, though.

[wedstrom]

Including a server delivered warning would be useful to fix those edge cases, as well as turning of eCommerce features. The main point I'm trying to make is that it doesn't have to be secure. You don't need worry about people breaking in to do business with you.

[Micheal Johnson]

It's not about "breaking in", but if the customer understands the implications of using a client-side script then he might not accept it as a way to ensure religious observance.

[Stephen Ostermiller]

If I were controlled a search engine I would want to remove that site from the results on the one day a week where it is not available, but include it in the index the other six days. It would be fine to send users there when the site is up and not good user experience when it is down. However, I'm not aware of any search engines that currently implement that.

[wedstrom]

I guess then it's just understanding the implications of the different approaches, explaining them to the customer and finding out how they feel about it. You can gently nudge that interpretation towards something more practical if you try to steer the analogies the right way. Websites are really nothing like traditional storefronts, and whether it's thought of as a poster, booklet, store and whether the users actions are like sending in a mail order, breaking in, or doing business with you directly have huge implications for the rules. We can only give suggestions and let them decide.

[Thorsten S.]

@IlmariKaronen Unfortunately AFAIK .htaccess does not allow calculation of values and simply sending e.g. "86400" would indicate a much too high value if it is already Saturday. Any ideas ?

[joosthoek]

@ThorstenS: Hmm... the Retry-After header can also take a timestamp, so if you could somehow obtain next Saturday's date, that would work. But it might be easiest to just use a dynamic 503 error document (e.g. in PHP) and make it emit the correct Retry-After header.

[Admin]

What do you think about the Lightbox solution Simon? Have you though of including it as an alternative for users who might not want to use 503 in the answer, and about the php code, shouldn't some curly braces wrap the reaction after the condition (I just start to learn PHP thus I ask).

[Admin]

Looking forward for your comment Simon...

[Simon Hayter]

A lightbox solution would work and your be better of just using JavaScript with a 5 second delay.