Today's Posts Follow Us On Twitter! TFL Members on Twitter  
Forum search: Advanced Search  
Navigation
Marketplace
  Members Login:
Lost password?
  Forum Statistics:
Forum Members: 24,254
Total Threads: 80,792
Total Posts: 566,471
There are 1395 users currently browsing (tf).
 
  Our Partners:
 
  TalkFreelance     TalkFreelance Information     Suggestions and Feedback :

Custom 404 Page

Thread title: Custom 404 Page
Reply    
    Thread tools Search this thread Display Modes  
07-29-2011, 03:38 AM
#1
JRayers is offline JRayers
JRayers's Avatar
Status: Member
Join date: Apr 2006
Location:
Expertise:
Software:
 
Posts: 377
iTrader: 4 / 100%
 

JRayers is on a distinguished road

  Old  Custom 404 Page

Was just browsing a few old articles and found a link to a TF thread - http://talkfreelance.com/thread14348.html

Maybe the thread no longer exists or the link structure has changed; either way it would be sensible to get a custom 404 page up to at least return the visitor to the TF homepage. Other options might be to have a page showing the top 10 current threads or maybe keyword related threads if the dead link has any keywords in it. The 404 can be a surprisingly significant part of incoming traffic.

Reply With Quote
Thanked by:
Artashes (08-01-2011)
07-29-2011, 05:23 AM
#2
Village Genius is offline Village Genius
Village Genius's Avatar
Status: Geek
Join date: Apr 2006
Location: Denver, CO
Expertise: Software
Software: Chrome, Notepad++
 
Posts: 6,894
iTrader: 18 / 100%
 

Village Genius will become famous soon enough

  Old

Those are due to software the forum used to use, apparently the legacy links don't transfer over. It would be better to mod_rewrite the following:
^thread([0-9]+).html$ showthread.php?t=$1 [R=301,L]

That will redirect the user and tell search engines that the address has been permanently moved. This is a pretty big deal, thanks for pointing that out.

Reply With Quote
07-30-2011, 03:23 AM
#3
JRayers is offline JRayers
JRayers's Avatar
Status: Member
Join date: Apr 2006
Location:
Expertise:
Software:
 
Posts: 377
iTrader: 4 / 100%
 

JRayers is on a distinguished road

  Old

It would be good to get those redirecting to the relevant thread. The 404 error is present for any links that don't resolve as far as I can see so it would make sense to chuck in a homepage redirect for those. Example: http://talkfreelance.com/anything

Reply With Quote
07-30-2011, 03:36 PM
#4
Dan is offline Dan
Dan's Avatar
Status: Request a custom title
Join date: Feb 2005
Location:
Expertise:
Software:
 
Posts: 3,164
iTrader: 15 / 86%
 

Dan is an unknown quantity at this point

  Old

Google "talkfreelance" -I like how Google now ignores spammy titles.

Having "Webmaster Forum - Web Design, Programming and SEO forums" on every page does not help differentiate pages. Probably looks like one big cluster crap to Google.

:/

Reply With Quote
07-31-2011, 06:05 AM
#5
JRayers is offline JRayers
JRayers's Avatar
Status: Member
Join date: Apr 2006
Location:
Expertise:
Software:
 
Posts: 377
iTrader: 4 / 100%
 

JRayers is on a distinguished road

  Old

I suspect the title is derived from the XML sitemap submitted to Google. Nonetheless I think page titles are certainly becoming less powerful in SEO. It's only a matter of time until someone discovers the next weak link in the Google search algorithm and exploits that.

Reply With Quote
07-31-2011, 06:44 AM
#6
Dan is offline Dan
Dan's Avatar
Status: Request a custom title
Join date: Feb 2005
Location:
Expertise:
Software:
 
Posts: 3,164
iTrader: 15 / 86%
 

Dan is an unknown quantity at this point

  Old

Spent 5 minutes looking at the code and this sums up my thoughts:
Code:
<td class="logo" onclick="parent.location.href='index.php'"><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
It's so disappointing to see nothing has changed. :/


It's only a matter of time until someone discovers the next weak link in the Google search algorithm and exploits that.
There is an exploit in Google Webmaster that lets you claim any website as you own. See it's traffic, keyphrases etc. and even let you redirect it to another website.

Reply With Quote
07-31-2011, 01:08 PM
#7
Gaz is offline Gaz
Gaz's Avatar
Status: Request a custom title
Join date: Apr 2007
Location: UK
Expertise: Code & Programming
Software: Coda, TextMate, Sublime 2
 
Posts: 2,097
iTrader: 26 / 100%
 

Gaz will become famous soon enough Gaz will become famous soon enough

Send a message via Skype™ to Gaz

  Old

Originally Posted by Village Genius View Post
Those are due to software the forum used to use, apparently the legacy links don't transfer over. It would be better to mod_rewrite the following:
^thread([0-9]+).html$ showthread.php?t=$1 [R=301,L]

That will redirect the user and tell search engines that the address has been permanently moved. This is a pretty big deal, thanks for pointing that out.
That's already in .htaccess

I think there's something screwed up with either the domain or the htacess. Subdomains don't work, either

Reply With Quote
10-31-2011, 07:11 AM
#8
jasondk is offline jasondk
Status: I'm new around here
Join date: Jun 2011
Location: New York
Expertise:
Software:
 
Posts: 18
iTrader: 0 / 0%
 

jasondk is on a distinguished road

  Old

Looks professional,maybe a good choice for us.Great and hope you keep it up.

Reply With Quote
Reply    


Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
 
Thread Tools
Display Modes

  Posting Rules  
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump:
 
  Contains New Posts Forum Contains New Posts   Contains No New Posts Forum Contains No New Posts   A Closed Forum Forum is Closed