SMF pretty URL's mod means no 404?!

[shteca]

Hi
I have SMF 2.0 with pretty URL's installed. But now, when i put in a random url like
/teudfhdjdywyueje
it just redirect to homepage. It does not show a 404 error...
This is a huge problem...

How do i fix this, i tried adding

Code Select Expand

ErrorDocument 404 /404.php
to htaccess but this did nothing. I have a custom 404 page at /404.php but how do i point 404 errors to this?
Do i need to uninstall pretty urls?

[Arantor]

SMF does that without pretty URLs too...

It's a tenet of how SMF is designed, really.

[shteca]

Why? this is not good

I will make Google confused!!!

[Arantor]

Only if people link to those URLs.

Google doesn't spontaneously go to pages that don't exist.

[shteca]

Yes but e.g. is if I make a topic or add a mod, then uninstall and it has made pages on the forum and then they get removed, Google will never know to de index them.

Or if i remove a post, Google will always index it. It will never know its a 404

[Arantor]

Pretty much, yes.

[shteca]

humph!

I have messed up my forum now...

I installed http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=2222 and now i cant access my admin panel!!!

how do i remove this mod without going into my admin panel?

[mashby]

Reverse the parsing instructions in the mod's download page (parser is over on the right) and edit your site's files accordingly. Did you get any errors installing it though?

[shteca]

No, it installed fine, but now all pages on the forum are showing 404 error.

Its a crappy mod and now its killed all my site pages

[shteca]

Ok, I managed to do it by removing all added lines from htaccess

Then just uninstalled the mod and deleted.

[shteca]

Buy basically there is no way to add a custom 404 page to SMF forums...

[Arantor]

Not without a lot more work because it's not just a case of having the error handler - anything that gets to index.php will be caught by SMF, and it needs to be rearchitected to handle that better - it's a huge task.

[mashby]

Sure there is. Did you do this step in the download page for the mod?

Note (1): (English)
To open the file htaccess.txt and in this line:
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php?action=Error404
To add if they have his forum in other one folder for example if his forum this one in www.yoursite.com/foro
ErrorDocument 404 /foro/index.php?action=Error404
Then To raise the root of his(her,your) domain(control) and to rename to .htaccess

Note (2): (English)
If you use another htaccess in the root of the domain(control) it(he,she) has to abrilo and add the line
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php?action=Error404
And to repeat previous step

I made a 404 page on my site with a mod using htaccess. However on further inspection it doesn't work so much on index.php as Arantor points out.

Code Select Expand

ErrorDocument 404 /404.shtml

[shteca]

Note (1): (English)
To open the file htaccess.txt and in this line:
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php?action=Error404
To add if they have his forum in other one folder for example if his forum this one in www.yoursite.com/foro
ErrorDocument 404 /foro/index.php?action=Error404
Then To raise the root of his(her,your) domain(control) and to rename to .htaccess

Note (2): (English)
If you use another htaccess in the root of the domain(control) it(he,she) has to abrilo and add the line
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php?action=Error404
And to repeat previous step

To be honest this English is not very good and I can't understand what they are trying to say.

I installed the mod but it didn't work...

[mashby]

I'll try to simplify it then...
Add this to your .htaccess file:

Code Select Expand

ErrorDocument 404 /index.php?action=Error404If you don't have one, make one and add that line to it.

[shteca]

Code Select Expand

/index.php?action=Error404

Will this direct to my 404.php file in my root?

I have a file here techyduck.com/404 this is a custom 404 page.

[shteca]

And tried to add that, it still does nothing.

I think in the SMF coding it is telling it to ignore any 404 errors and just redirect them to homepage.

So i think there needs to be a mod that can remove this coding and replace with a 404 option

[mashby]

OK, I can move this topic to the Mod Request board if you'd like...

[shteca]

Yes please! I am so surprised this isn't a built in feature with SMF.

[Kindred]

that mod works just fine....   I have it installed and working on 40konline - and there are no problems at all...

[Arantor]

And all of this pales into insignificance with the fact that almost nothing will ever be directed to the 404 handler in the first place

[Kindred]

hmmm?   It does for me, Arantor.

http://www.40konline.com/blah

it is true that http://www.40konline.com/index.php?action=blah will NOT bounce to the 404... but the other one will...

[Arantor]

Yes, *real* 404s will. But nothing from within index.php will be, which when pretty URLs is concerned, could be almost anything.

[Kindred]

oh... true...   Pretty urls has to be one of the stupidest mods to apply, IMHO

[Arantor]

Same is true of SimpleSEF, though, and for exactly the same reason - and ultimately it's just because some people do want prettier looking URLs even if there isn't an SEO benefit.

[shteca]

Do you have pretty URL mod?

Did you follow the instructions or just install?

Can you give some more info?

What is your site?

[Arantor]

Kindred doesn't use the pretty URLs mod, I have done but I have a very heavily modified version to play with (and no, I can't share it, don't even ask)

The fact remains that it doesn't matter: once anything is redirected to SMF's index.php, whether it's done via pretty URLs or not, it's basically never going to generate a 404 no matter what you do because SMF just does not operate like that.

[shteca]

Yeah.

Will SMF every add this to an update?

[Arantor]

What, adding pretty-but-no-SEO-use URLs or rewriting all the handling to add 404 handling?

The former is unlikely, the latter only marginally less so.

[shteca]

The 404 error page.

[Arantor]

Nah. The amount of effort to implement it is not trivial.