Nice Idea For a 404 Page

[Deb]

While surfing... I came accross this 404 page... I thought the concept was a good one so figured I would share ;)

http://www.xs4all.nl/~mato1/frw/finger.html

[Mandi]

I just get a plain old 403 error on this.[nbsp][nbsp]Can you describe what the idea was?

[Monica]

Me too.[nbsp][nbsp]:-(

Hey Mandi... am I following you around, or are you following[nbsp][nbsp]me.[nbsp][nbsp]?

[ugarfie]

I'm getting the old ....[nbsp][nbsp]FORBIDDEN ....

You have NO permission..

Please enlighten us !

[Deb]

Hrrmmm I should have saved it... sorry about that...

Let's see if I can describe it:

It stated the obvious...
This page is no longer here blah blah.. please send the following message to the site that sent you here.. and it had a text box on it with the message already there which said something like:

Hi, I just linked to http://the.bad.link.com from your page at http://the.referring.url.com and realized the link is no longer valid.[nbsp][nbsp]Please update your links to reflect the current web site at http://the.good.home.page.link.com
thank you blah blah...

What it did was give the user the opportunity to send the email just by clicking a button..

If I remember correctly the TO: email addy was already filled in as Webmaster@referring.url.com yet also leaving the ability for you to change the TO addy....

So the end result would be the visitor sees the not found page... clicks "Send Mail" button which sends a note to the referring site owner to update their links and once they click the Send button they are redirected to the current home page.[nbsp][nbsp]It of course also allowed the visitor to just click to enter w/o sending the message.

It was a neat idea anyway :)

Deb

[Justin]

I've got a better idea - what if it automatically emails webmaster@referingdomain.com? Wouldn't that be cool? Might tick some people off but would make them fix their links faster :)[nbsp][nbsp]Can do that in php :D

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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Support

[Deb]

If you do that though, you risk at minimum some of the following:

*Bounced Messages...
*No referring URL (for those that bookmark or type it in)
*Getting your name on mailing lists or some other fubar thing
*Getting autoresponders
*Emailing places like altavista or something that really doesn't give a hoot...

Shrug I dunno... but I would fear it could cause you to end up with a lot of strange stuff in your box.... I guess if you set up a return pop to handle it might work... who knows. (well Justin will know soon enough I'm sure hehe)

Deb

[Justin]

Ok, so I go set up PHP@hostfacts.com as a forward to a hotmail account that I don't use anymore :) And I can use simple regular expressions to determine if there's a refering URL, and if not show a normal 404 page :þ
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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Support

[Deb]

Well fine... you do that then :)

Just don't forget who gave you the ideas in the first place !

Deb
--
[nbsp][nbsp] The tech driving, idea generating, loud typing, overly demanding, if you know her ya hate her but can't help luv'in her, guru wanna be, type of gal :þ

[Justin]

The tech driving...
Where are you driving them? INSANE? :þ

[Monica]

Tah dah![nbsp][nbsp]This sounds like a PERFECT opportunity to use (my beloved) CGIEMAIL!

Visitor gets to send a form, fill out an optional comment field (ie., "I really think your site is the best on the web..."), optional[nbsp][nbsp]visitor's email field,[nbsp][nbsp]sends, gets redirected (to what ever URL you assign), you get an email, and in the email's source code, it will list the url the form was sent from.[nbsp][nbsp]

Come on... jump on my CGIEMAIL bandwagon![nbsp][nbsp]It's fun, it's easy, it's coooooool![nbsp][nbsp]Serving margaritas at 5, bring a glass!

Deb... I love this idea![nbsp][nbsp]I'm gonna do this to my 404 (one of these days).[nbsp][nbsp]Danke![nbsp][nbsp]:)

[Monica]

Ok...went and did it.[nbsp][nbsp]I'd never get to sleep with an idea popping around in my head.[nbsp][nbsp]

Anyhoo... I made a rough draft.
www.mauka.net/sillygirl.html (http://www.mauka.net/sillygirl.html)[nbsp][nbsp]Needs work... but oh well for now.

The form comes to my email, and in the source code, it shows[nbsp][nbsp]what url the form was generated from.

Snip of my email source code:

Received: from 207.26.194.19 by www.mauka.net (http://www.mauka.net) with HTTP;
Sun, 23 May 1999 09:20:21
X-Mailer: cgiemail 1.5
( form="http://www.mauka.net/sillygirl.html" )
[nbsp]

I also made a "button" ;) for the visitor to click a plain ole "non form" redirection button (so they think), this way, I can still receive a notification/form from them as well.

I'm also going to establish another web based email, to have[nbsp][nbsp]all these 404 forms sent to.[nbsp][nbsp]My current web based email won't show headers or source code.
[This message has been edited by Monica (edited 05-23-99)]

[pqwabbit]

[quote]I've got a better idea - what if it automatically emails webmaster@referingdomain.com? Wouldn't that be cool? Might tick some people off but would make them fix their links faster [quote]

I had a program that did that it was veru useful evertyime someone stumbled n a 404 it owuld email me and tell me exactly where the person tried to link to and where they came from - it as a beutil thing.[nbsp][nbsp]I want to say ti was called "Apache Guardian" it was justa[nbsp][nbsp]simple cgi- proggy highly useful emailed me when scripts got a 500 error too.

Lea
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Bunnies make life better.
Massachusetts House Rabbit Society, Inc.
http://www.MAHouseRabbit.org/

[Armand]

Sounds like Apache Guardian to me Lea. And if anyone wanted to check it out: http://www.xav.com/scripts/guardian/

[Justin]

A warning about Apache Guardian - please be careful installing and configuring it, as it receives all 500 errors too - even if caused by Guardian. All it takes is a path/permissions/other minor error to throw it into a loop...

They warn of this but I figured it's worth repeating :D

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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Support