How to update a configuration setting or messagebase entry via PHP

Content

Hi,

Is it possible to amend a configuration setting or messagebase entry via the customer portal?

Background

We have a process that fires off 100 AJAX requests. When this is running, a particular section of the site need to have "Under Maintenance" showing. The best way we found would be with a configuration setting. However, this is manual - what we would like to do is when the process starts, the script to update the entry and when it finishes, to update it again.

Yes, we could use a custom object but it seems redundant seeing as the config settings would be ideal