Topic not found, error message difference...

[Biology Forums]

This link is a topic that does not exist, but you'll notice the error message is a warning, as opposed to an error (when logged in) --> http://biology-forums.com/index.php?topic=119902378

What controls what gets displayed, what file?

[Arantor]

The warning is shown because SMF doesn't know for certain that the topic can't be found. All it knows is that for a guest, that topic is not visible (it's doing a query for that topic + board access for guests)

Since it fails, it offers up the login screen in the supposition that logging in might fix the problem, just as if you tried to visit action=admin as a guest.

The error of course is that it knows you're logged in, so again it does topic + your board access but this time it can't magically assume that anything you can do can improve it.

Can you change it? Not really, seeing how it's the *generic* is_not_guest handler that is dealing with it rather than the error handler. The only way you'd change it is if it always threw a fatal error at a user even if the user could actually potentially do something about their situation (like logging in). From a usability perspective, SMF's behaviour is absolutely correct.

[Biology Forums]

Okay, thanks for the confirmation. No need to worry then...