How do I view the maintenance page without putting the site in maintenance mode?
By default there is no route to access the maintenance page via url. You can create a menu item and the corresponding page callback in your module : 

// Access maintenance page regardless of the maintenance mode. 
$items['maintenance'] = array(
  'title' =&gt; 'Maintenance',
  'page callback' =&gt; 'yourmodule_maintenance_page',
  'access callback' =&gt; 'user_is_logged_in',
  'type' =&gt; MENU_CALLBACK
);

yourmodule_maintenance_page () {
  // Just use the internal status code to make Drupal load the apropriate theme and template. 
  return MENU_SITE_OFFLINE;
} 


And that's all, go to /maintenance to see the page. 

You may also want to override the 'maintenance_page' theme, have a look at :


the base preprocess function in includes/theme.maintenance.inc
base template file in modules\system\maintenance-page.tpl.php