Heres a better link about the google 404 enhancement script.

Ok, I implemented better 404 handling (at least for .aspx and files handled by .NET).

I've updated this site with the new code. So for example if someone typos the url to the download page like this

http://www.mojoportal.com/dwnload.aspx

It will go to the 404 and google will suggest the correct download url

If you use Firebug you can see the status is 404.

I have some other things to finish before I can merge this to trunk. Currently its in my sandbox and it will only compile at the moment for MySql because I haven't implemented some new web store methods in MS SQL yet. Should have it in ther by tomorrow night though.

This was a good suggestion, the previous handling of 404s was masking 404s from google for .aspx pages.

Its possible to disable the handler by commenting out the httpmodule in Web.config

<add name="PageNotFoundHandler" type="mojoPortal.Web.PageNotFoundHttpModule, mojoPortal.Web" />

and you can disable the google enhancement by setting this to false in user.config

<add key="EnableGoogle404Enhancement" value="true" />

Its also possible to render a custom 404 page using this setting:

<add key="Custom404Page" value="/PageNotFound.aspx" />

you can put a different .aspx page or even a plain html page.

The built in PageNotFound.aspx is nice because it shows the skin and menu. Seems a pretty good solution.

Best,

Joe

The 2.2.8.0 release is now available.

Best,

Joe

Hi Stef,

I see what you mean, I had not noticed it. So basically what happens is to have a friendly 404 we can't redirect to a a page, because we still want the response code to be 404 and we don't want a different url. So what we do is make a server side web request to get the contents of the PageNotFound.aspx page and we render it into the reponse and set the 404 status code. So this server side request is not made by the user so its not an authenticated request.

I think the best solution I can come up with is for me to add some code into the PageNotFound.aspx that will hide the login and register links completely on that page.

Best,

Joe

Hi Stef,

Its a server side web request to retrieve the content of the custom 404, there is no server.transfer nor response.redirect involved. I certainly am not aware of an easy way to impersonate the user because its based on cookies so the server side request we make is not going to have the user's authentication cookies.

Generally I think the perception problems you are talking about are because our custom 404 looks too much like a normal page, many sites solve this by having minimal content and links on the page to make it more clear that its an error page (albeit a friendly one) and I think this would clear up any ambiguity of perception probably better than trying to adapt it so it keeps the user context. Whereas right now the page looks so normal that it is perceived like any normal page rather than as an error page.

When I look at these examples of custom 404 pages I only see a few where they show a menu at all, most of them go for a very clean friendly error page without menus or other things that make it seem like a normal page in the site

I generally prefer simple solutions to complex ones. I can easily make the error page not select/highlight a page in the menu and I can easily remove things that lead to confusion but I do not want to add a lot of complexity to make it seem like no error has happened. A 404 is an error and perhaps the issue is that we've gone too far in making it look like a normal page, but since its not quite all the way normal its more confusing.

Its currently possible to use a custom 404 other than the one we include. The config setting <add key="Custom404Page" value="/PageNotFound.aspx" /> allows you to define your own custom 404 page.

Best,

Joe

Yes, these suggestions are exactly the happy medium easy to implement kind of solution I was thinking of, I will do these things.

Best,

Joe 

Hate to bring up an old post, but my question is pretty relevant to this thread:

I have a different opinion on this along with some clients who would like it if the main navigation does appear on the 404 page. The thinking is that if a user is on a 404 page they can easily choose from the main nav to go somewhere else. I think the red message is clear enough (for me anyway).

Is there a setting somewhere that can be changed to show the main nav on the 404 error page? Personally I'd like the masterpage to display the same on a regular page as it does on the 404 page. The logged in issue isn't that important, I'm mostly considering usibility for the end user when they land on that 404 page. I want them to choose elsewhere to go in my site and not hit the back button to go back to a Google search result list for example.

Thanks!!

Perfect, this would be excellent!
<add key="SuppressMenuOnBuiltIn404Page" value="true" />

This CMS is awesome, I tell everyone about it and how fluid and on top of things the developer of it is!