XF 1.5 Redirect to home page instead of "The requested page could not be found" error page

[jim83]

I'm wondering exactly what is going on when you land on a Xenforo page which no longer (or never) exists?

For example, when you go to: https://xenforo.com/community/forums/asdf

Obviously, "asdf" never existed and you get a "The requested page could not be found." error.

What do the search engines see when they see this page? Is it a 404 page or does it, in some other way, let the search engines know that the page is now a 404 (if a thread was deleted, for example)?

Is there any possibly way of automatically redirecting these pages to the site's home page, instead of the user getting stuck on this page? If it is possible to do this, how is it done? Via the .htaccess file?

Finally, if it is possible to redirect a user to the home page instead of being stuck on this page, are there any SEO implications for doing this?

 

[Kirby]

If a URL is not found (because the route, action or content does not exist) it will generate a 404.

Redirecting the user to the homepage is not a good user experience and IMHO should not be done; if a page does not exist you should tell the user so (and provide useful links, information, etc. to help him find what he is looking for).
Redirecting should only be done if the page has effectively been moved.