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Missing Documents: How to make 404 messages friendlier with Apache
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Known Problems
There might be sites linking to a page on your site which doesn't exist. Perhaps they spelled wrong, perhaps you've moved the page. Either way, if you can't get them to change the link you should make a redirect to the current, or the correct document, thus you can save readers any pain.
Common Mistakes
Tell the user which mistakes are commonly made when writing URLs. For example, Apache is case-sensitive and MS influenced people might write .htm instead of .html.
Search
If the user comes to a page which doesn't exist, give him the opportunity to search for the info at your site.
Path Unwinding
Your script should first unwind the path to the requested document. Start at the end, and remove each level in the path. Check the new path to see if it exists and store it if it exists (use http head, for example), along with the title of the document and other information (keywords or description). Do this for each level until the root.
Finally present the user with the result and tell him to try any of the returned results. Suggest a search with the different parts of the URL, by providing a direct link to the search engine with the proper search criteria.
Spelling
While doing path unwinding you can submit each level of the path to a spell checker, or to the speling_module of Apache. If a spell check somewhere in the path is performed, test the whole path. If you find that the whole path is correct, redirect the user to the correct page. Otherwise, store the spelling fix along with your other information in order to give the user better help.
Most Popular Sections
If you know that some parts of your site is very popular you should present those to the user. It might be exactly what he was looking for.
Standard Features
You should also tell the user where he is, ie. that your site is of this or that kind. Continue with offering the user options, try out our discussion forum, read your news, visit our links, give us feedback about the problem, etc. Try using the path provided as keywords for searches in your forum, perhaps you have a forum discussing the thing searched for?
Information Overload
You want the reader to find something at your site which will keep him there. Be careful though, don't overload him, if it turns out that you have 50 solutions, just try out some broad ones on the user, and present him with an option for reading all suggestions you have.
Logging
Finally, a scripted 404 can be used to perform more accurate logging of missing pages. This is especially valid if you don't have access to the error logs of your site. You should take note of where the user came from (in order to check if someone is providing incorrect links), where the user went from the error page (this is achieved by sending the user through a special redirect link where you log the redirection), ie. did you provide a good service, and what the user did try to reach.
All this information is invaluable for you when you later go through your logs to find out which problems your site has.
Comment List
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Internet Explorer 4 and newer
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Paul Kenneth Egell-Johnsen
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23.11.2000 09:51
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Will always show its own 404 page. Therefore make sure that the total page size of your 404 document (including graphics) is larger than 512 bytes.
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