Apache and maintenance page

[empress101]

Hi..have simple question.

I am kinda new to Apache. Have used it some.

I have a question about the maintenance page you see whenever you go to a website that is doing maintenance on there server.

Can anyone tell me what is the common practice to direct a user to a maintenance page on the server when doing maintenance on an app.

for example:

I am using Apache, mod_jk and Tomcat. We have an app that sits on Tomcat. Ocassionally we will need to take that app down for updates and such. We want it so that if a user tries to access the app over web while we are doing our maintenance. they will get a nice "Server Maintenance Page" explaining comeback later.

We have thought just to make a page and place it on the server. Then when we need to do our maintenance just point the apache mod_jk to the maintenance page instead of the app. We imagine we would do this through the conf file.

Is there another way or more common practice?
Having to change the conf file everytime, seems there be a better way or safer way?

Thank you for help,