Soft 404 errors for deleted users, moved threads etc.

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richey
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Soft 404 errors for deleted users, moved threads etc.

Post by richey »

Hello,

I know this has been brought up before, dating back up to 5 (!) years. Still, however, the software doesn't seem to provide a good solution to resolve soft 404 errors for search engines.

Google Webmaster tools finds "soft 404 errors" which it considers 'problematic':
https://support.google.com/webmasters/a ... 1708?hl=en

When a page doesn't exist 'for the world out there' (particularly a bot), it should return a 404 error!
However, in phpBB, the software doesn't. If a user has been deleted or if a thread has been moved to a section of the board that hides it from the outside world, it returns a code 200 "ok" (!) and redirects the bot to another page, but doesn't display actual content which is interpreted as a structural problem of the whole website.

It think this should be fixed - VBulletin, which once also had this problem as my web search turned out - did that already. phpBB could actually redirect the user to some other page but should definitely return

Code: Select all

header("HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found");
to bots.

cheers,
r.
.
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david63
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Joined: Thu Dec 19, 2002 8:08 am

Re: Soft 404 errors for deleted users, moved threads etc.

Post by david63 »

richey wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2017 3:39 pm It think this should be fixed
Then either create a bug report or a RFC on Area51
David
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