404 images error. How do you handle it?

Bothering 404 on old images missing

[silverbytes]

I see lots of 404 errors in my logs, they are images that once was in site and they are not anymore.
However they are put in some old adds in other servers and thus I get 404 errors when that pages are shown.

How do you handle it actually?
Any reccomendations?

[Dijkgraaf]

That sort of depends what you want to achieve.

1) You could upload a new image with the same name that asks the webmaster to delete or update the reference.
2) You could configure your server to deny requests for the missing images.
3) You could configure your server to rewrite the request to a new version of the image.

If you let people know what your preference is and what type of web server you use, then they can give more specific answers.

[kaled]

As a minimum, to keep error logs clean(ish) I would create a small black and white image that simply read something like "image deleted" and ensure it was delivered when needed. However, depending on what access you have to the server, this may not be so easy.

Kaled.

[silverbytes]

Putting a bogus image would take space in my server and cause some confusion with really used images.

How about

3) You could configure your server to rewrite the request to a new version of the image.

You mean a 301 redirect with old image path an new one? How do I do that?

[Dijkgraaf]

Well that would depend on your web server.
If your web site is running on an appache server, you could use the .htacces to do a redirect or a rewrite (there is a whole forum about it, see [webmasterworld.com ])