What is the proper way to temporarily "pause/stop" traffic on a site?

I know we can just remove the tag to stop traffic on a specific site (not all sites), but is there a recommended way without using a plugin to do the same?

Would either:

  1. temporarily replacing the domains in the URLs field with a blank or URL that doesn’t have the tag of a Website with the “only track visits and actions…” option checked, or
  2. adding * to the list of IPs to exclude on the Website?

If one or either of those would work, would there be any issues with previously logged data in general or if a previous archive period was invalidated while either of the above were in place?

Appreciate any help. Thanks.