Set Site Collection to Read Only Mode in SharePoint 2007/2010

A common situation where the getsitelock and setsitelock operations are useful is when a site is backed up. Typically, before you back up a site collection, the site should be locked and no users should have access to it.

To determine the lock status of the site, you can use the following getsitelock syntax:

stsadm -o getsitelock -url http://server_name

Once the lock status of the site collection is determined, you can use the noaccess parameter of the setsitelock operation to lock out all users to the site:

stsadm -o setsitelock -url http://server_name -lock noaccess

You can use the Backup operation to create a backup of the site collection:

stsadm -o backup -url http://server_name -filename "filename.bak" -overwrite

After the site has been backed up, you can use the none parameter of the setsitelock operation to remove all locks to the site:

stsadm -o setsitelock -url http://server_name -lock none