Custom _404 behaviour

How do I lose the <foo?404> out of the new URL?

[Ewen]

We're busy installing some new forum software and bedding it in. It uses a custom 404 file in order to build Search Engine Friendly information into the page URL so:

/forum/forum.asp?forum_ID=1&forum_title=Foo%20bar

should become:

/forum/forum_1/Foo_bar/message.asp

That's the theory. The custom 404 as supplied uses a server.transfer to effect the url change. However, where it should be giving:

[<ourserver>...]

it's actually giving:

/forum/<404_file.asp>?404;http://<ourserver>/forum/forum_1/Foo_bar/message.asp

Seemingly, the code works out the box for other customers and correctly removes the old URL up to and including the 404;. It's been suggested it has to be an IIS set up issue.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance,
Ewen

[JuniorHarris]

Check to see if the browser is setup to display friendly messages or not...I think this may effect the url display in the browser.

WebBug [cyberspyder.com] is a handy utility that will reflect the headers and status returned by a page. Use the HTTP 1.1 to check the 404 trap pages.

[Ewen]

Hi there,

Thanks for this. The browsers affected don't have friendly URLs or HTTP Errors set, but I don't think this is the problem as some sites with the software we're trying to get working do display the desired behaviour.

I tried the browser with alternately friendly URLs, then HTTP errors, then both, but alas it didn't make any difference to the problem.

Thanks for the steer on WebBug. I've downloaded that and will check it out (though I'm not in the office for the new few days, so I might not be able to do so very well until the following week).

Thanks again

[Xoc]

In IIS Manager, you need to go into the Properties ¦ Home Directory ¦ Configuration dialog. From there, select the .ASP extension. Press the Edit button. Then check the checkbox for "Check the File Exists". This will cause the URL to come out correct.