I was often asked where the offline template for the offline mode is in Joomla! 1.5.x

I know... a simple Google search would have provided this answer very quick (top 5 search results) but I keep getting e-mails from friends asking me the same question... "Where's the offline page for Joomla 1.5?!"

I noticed that most Joomla! developers search for the offline template for two main reasons:

1) Change the Joomla standard offline image

2) Remove the login box from the offline site (sometimes that form is a pain when you're making changes and don't want them to be visible to users, because it grants registered users access to the site)

In any case... I find it curious that so many people ask this question but so few find the answer online.

Just to add to the endless sources for this information, here's the quick answer:

The PHP file you need is /templates/system/offline.php and the CSS file for it is in /templates/system/css/offline.css

I would recommend making a backup of these two files before you start working on them even if they're pretty easy to recover from the Joomla! installation kit.

Hope this post finds itself in the right Google results and answers so many redundant questions.