Creating customised error pages

or something similar

[Gordon2004]

Hey all,

I've just redesigned my entire site, as a result have a few pages which will result in 404s when linked to from a search engine.

What's the best method of avoiding this?

I was thinking of changing the missing pages to redirect the user to my index page. Is this the normal way of doing things? If so how would I go about redirecting users?

Another option would be to create a customised 404 page. Would that be a better solution?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[balinor]

Hi Gordon....your best bet would be to use a redirect to get the users to go to your index page (do a search of Webmaster world and you will find a few ways to do this). Having a custom 404 page is important as well so users who somehow end up there can at least navigate back.

[divaone]

you can do most all types of directs and custom error pages with a script at xav.com called guardian. best one i've used. on my error pages i include a search form, links to relevant content and the main page.

[andy_boyd]

I would go for a customized 404.

If a customer / user comes across a broken link and is automatically redirected to the index after clicking through from an SE they will not understand what happened and probably leave confused. You could customize the 404 to be a basic site map so that they can quickly negotiate their way to the page in question.

Or you could just set up a redirect to the location of the new page?

[Gordon2004]

Thanks for all your suggestions.

I think I'll go with a customised error page.

I'm off to do a search for how to create them. I'll be back if I luck out...

[euripydes]

Okay... custom error page sounds like a good idea... done my search on Google, know how to go about it... How do I stop my custom 404 page from appearing in Google's (or anyone else's) search results?

[robert adams]

your 404 page won't show up in search results unless you put content on it that will get it listed. If a search turns up the old page, the viewer will see the 404 you create, that is it's purpose.

luck,
robert

[pageoneresults]

I would have recommended that you set up 301 Moved Permanently redirects for the old pages to the new pages. There is no need to lose out on those previous listings and setting up the 301s will effectively update the SEs database to point to the new URI instead of returning 404s.

Whatever you decide to do, make sure that your 301s and 404s are returning the proper status in the server headers.

Check Server Headers [searchengineworld.com]