RE: [cobalt-users] Re-Directing users on a 404 error

[Greg Hewitt-Long <greg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> >The same way on any Apache server. With the ErrorDocument command found in
>>the www.apache.org docs. Or, even at
>>http://list.cobalt.com/mailman/listinfo/cobalt-users
>
>*At* the risk of getting flamed... and I know I probably will but ..be kind.. this is just a suggestion and not necessairly a critique....
>
>Over my years of being a moderator on one message system (old compuserve) and moderating a fairly busy message board currently... I see this sort of answer as being totally unconstructive.
>
>You took the time to answer it but you really only gave a semi-sarcastic, fairly non-helpful message.
>
>I am also interested in this process.. I know it's fairly complex to get it done right, I took your advice given in this message and did a search at the archives on 404... no joy... also did one on ErrorDocument command and found a flood of messages that did not necessairly give me the step by step process needed to accomplish this task...
>
>If you consider that many here are newbies and how much a teacher learns when he actually teaches, maybe instead of doing the, somewhat standard, "go to the archives" response, writing a step by step "tutorial" perhaps with a new message header "CUSTOM 404 MESSAGE" would serve two purposes.. It would give those of us recieving these hundred or so messages daily something else to chew on and it would place into the archives a message that the next person who did a search with the 404 query, something to find that would specifically tell them what they wanted to know and how to get it done...
>
>Now.. keeping in mind that flaming me only wastes energy and I'm only making a suggestion as someone who *mainly* watches this list and almost always does hours of searching to find what he wants in the archives... Be kind...
>
>And I'm still looking for an easy, step-by-step, process to do this aimed at someone who can't even remember how to run a damn .pl file from the command line... Yes I have books.. a couple hundred dollars worth.. Yes I read them when I can find time... (almost embarrased to say where I find that time:) Many of us here are one man operations with all of the process sitting on our laps... anything that saves an hour here and an hour there is of great benefit and believe me.. we never forget those who remove the thorn from our big aching paw...


CUSTOM 404 MESSAGE - or ErrorHandlers for Beginners

This applies to changing the error documents on a single site:

1. cd to the httpd home directory of the site your are altering - usually something along the lines of /home/sites/siteNN/web/ - where NN is the site number.  If you have a login you might also try `cd ~login/../../web/`
2. using vi or some other suitable editing program to create a file called .htaccess - the period is important - it's supposed to be there in-front of the htaccess part fo the filename.

Inside, you need to put one line for each error you want to handle - the error codes most likely encountered are: 401, 404 and 404

eg:

ErrorDocument 401 /401err.shtml
ErrorDocument 404 /404err.shtml
ErrorDocument 403 /401err.shtml

The example above uses .shtml files (server side include HTML files, which are found at the web root level of the site (....web/).

Using .shtml files means that you can use an SSI call to some other CGI, either logging the incident, alerting the site admin, or both (or just about anything else that can be accomplished in SSI).

To change the 404 document for a complete cobalt server:

These instructions may change, have not been tested by me, and are used at your own risk - Cobalt offers an unsupported solution for changing the default 404 page at the following address:

http://www.cobalt.com/support/kb/search.php3?ques=errordocument&qid=312&language=1

Use it wisely.

Greg Hewitt-Long

There - I've done my good deed for the day - any idea on my RAQ3 that's playing up? - anyone?!?!?




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