XF 1.1 Forum Error

[phaze3131]

Hey,

I need help. I've been getting alot of errors on my forum.

Like some deleted threads:
http://prepaidcellforum.com/threads/feel-free-to-discuss-anything.6/
http://prepaidcellforum.com/threads/flying-high-imagination-begins.423/


Google is still crawling them so I need to find a way to correct with a redirect maybe. Redirect to homepage maybe.

 

[Mike]

There's nothing to really worry about there. They're just making you aware. For example, those attachment 403s happen if guests can't view attachments - that's expected.

 

[Parminder Singh Chahal]

Theres two things you can do:
1) No follow /attachments in your robots.txt
or
2) Allow guests to view attachments

Another thing you could do is provide a user id and pass to Google ( I havent tried that myself).

I just allow every one to view attachments and even have hot linking enabled and just make sure all images are watermarked brings in more type in traffic in the long run.

 

[Parminder Singh Chahal]

Thats if you dont want to see those errors but as Mike said its just for information. It has no negetive effects as far as I know.

 

[phaze3131]

I see. Alright cool! Thanks for the info guys. I just hate seeing those errors.

 

[phaze3131]

Theres two things you can do:
1) No follow /attachments in your robots.txt
or
2) Allow guests to view attachments

Another thing you could do is provide a user id and pass to Google ( I havent tried that myself).

I just allow every one to view attachments and even have hot linking enabled and just make sure all images are watermarked brings in more type in traffic in the long run.

I just checked and guest are already allowed to view attachments. So I don't get why I got that error.


Ok, so now am aware that it has no negative effects. What I really wanna do is redirect the errors to homepage. Can it be done?

 

[Parminder Singh Chahal]

I personally believe that it is not good practice to redirect that traffic to home page from seo point of view (I believe Google doesnt like it) . Have you thought about creating a custom error page with links to different sections of your website and also a nice statement to engage people and also show them how they can use the search function to find what they are looking for.

If you decide to redirect error pages to index then you can add the following to your .htaccess file :

ErrorDocument 404 index.html
ErrorDocument 403 index.html

You can add other errors to that list the same way but honestly speaking I would never do that on any of my websites for the fear of being flagged by Google as a site that has auto generates pages and plays with traffic the way they dont want us to. If there is an error I would send an error code and show a custom error page instead. I dont have custom error pages but that is what best practice is in my opinion. I hope other experienced members can provide better insight.

 

[phaze3131]

I personally believe that it is not good practice to redirect that traffic to home page from seo point of view (I believe Google doesnt like it) . Have you thought about creating a custom error page with links to different sections of your website and also a nice statement to engage people and also show them how they can use the search function to find what they are looking for.

If you decide to redirect error pages to index then you can add the following to your .htaccess file :

ErrorDocument 404 index.html
ErrorDocument 403 index.html

You can add other errors to that list the same way but honestly speaking I would never do that on any of my websites for the fear of being flagged by Google as a site that has auto generates pages and plays with traffic the way they dont want us to. If there is an error I would send an error code and show a custom error page instead. I dont have custom error pages but that is what best practice is in my opinion. I hope other experienced members can provide better insight.

I see.. Thanks for the info. Hmm.. I think that will work, creating a custom error message with links to homepage maybe.

But how do I do that?

 

[Parminder Singh Chahal]

Searching resources brought this up : http://xenforo.com/community/resources/goodfornothing-four-oh-four.767/

 

[phaze3131]

awesome! thank you. I will give it a try.