Redirecting from a deleted page

[tristam]

When I remove a product from my site would it be a good idea to re direct that now disused page to a similar page on my site? If so how is it done?

Thanks

www.thepenzone.co.uk

[Mike Hughes]

It's not really worth doing unless you have a lot of strong external links going to the disused page (and even then it's probably better to contact the link author and ask them to change where it points to).

Make sure your 404 error page encourages visitors to click through into your website. This way anyone who does stumble across a deleted page gets a second chance to find something on your site.

[Mantra]

Make sure your 404 error page encourages visitors to click through into your website. This way anyone who does stumble across a deleted page gets a second chance to find something on your site.

How is this done?

[Mike Hughes]

There's a good resource here https://www.lcn.com/blog/beginners-g...tom-404-pages/

It includes the technical stuff with plenty of tips, advice and examples.

I create a page in sellerdeck to use as it has all the navigation links, search function, etc.

[MattSMR]

How is this done?

Hi Martin,

Take a look at one of our sites 404 page - we've got this layout across all of our 4u sites. Sections change based on the sites structure.

https://www.castironradiators4u.co.uk/uk/404.html

I would always 301 a removed product, to either a replacement product or its containing section. People bookmark, people pin to pinterest. all of these links will be clicked at some point - you never want to 404 a customer if possible.

[Mantra]

Thank you Mike and Matt for your helpful comments, Martin

[Mantra]

Take a look at one of our sites 404 page - we've got this layout across all of our 4u sites. Sections change based on the sites structure.

I had a go at setting this up with a new brochure page and fragment - see offline page preview below:



I have 2 question here:
1. Is there a quick way to hide or blockout the link button produced in the left sidebar so as not to appear?
2. How do I make the link to the contact action form when I have already used the URL link in the fragment back to the homepage?

I would always 301 a removed product, to either a replacement product or its containing section. People bookmark, people pin to pinterest. all of these links will be clicked at some point - you never want to 404 a customer if possible.

This leads me to a further question:
3. To do this do I just need to add the 301 redirect lines to the acatalog ".htaccess.txt" file extract below and if so where would they go?

<FilesMatch "\.(fil|session|authorise|mail)$">
    Order Allow,Deny
    Deny from all
</FilesMatch>

Martin
Mantra Audio

[MattSMR]

Hi Martin,



1) sidebar, we have a true/false variable in a block if, simply called "hide from sidebar" - we just set this as we go along, makes it nice and easy

2) put the link in the body of the fragment. Ensure you have enabled HTML content by wrapping your fragment content in the ACTINIC html tags -

!!< >!!

- then simply build an anchor

<a href="/cgi-bin/mf000001.pl?ACTION=SHOWFORM">anchor</a>

to link to contact us page.

3) You need to enable RewriteEngine in your .htaccess, then write a line of 301 redirect, as below

Redirect 301 OLDURL NEWURL

[Mantra]

That's fine Matt, thanks I'll give it a go!
Martin

[Mantra]

Hi Martin,

1) sidebar, we have a true/false variable in a block if, simply called "hide from sidebar" - we just set this as we go along, makes it nice and easy

I have set up the 404 Not Found error page as a Brochure Fragment and updated the .htacces file to include the code line "ErrorDocument 404 /acatalog/404.html" so the link back to the site functions as intended:
https://shop.mantra-audio.co.uk/acatalog/xxx.html

However I still have a problem with placing the true/false variable in the block if to "hide from sidebar".
I have set up the HideFromSidebar true/false variable in the design library under Brochure variables and see that I can check this true/false in Properties. I then tried enclosing the variable within a block if on various layouts without success.
Which layout should I be using and are there any specific conditions that need to incorporated within the block if?
Any further advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Martin
Mantra Audio

[Mike Hughes]

In cases like this I always find breaking it down into parts works well.

So the first thing I'd do is make sure the blockif is working. In this case put your blockif on it's own just before the bit you want to hide and then put some text in there along the lines of 'I can see this'.

Once you get the blockif working correctly you can then focus on hiding the bits you don't want to appear.

[Mantra]

Thank you for the prompt, Mike
I eventually got it sussed so that the True/False condition worked satisfactorily by renaming the varable to "SidebarLink" set to True (default) incorporated within a Block If containing the variable SidebarLink condition wrapped around the code line in the Layout - Simple Brochure Page Link.
When the Brochure Property | Sidebar link - True/False is set to False the link does not appear in the Sidebar.
Martin

[Mantra]

The changes made are working just fine, however, Google Search Console has suddenly started to return a soft 404 error for the page https://shop.mantra-audio.co.uk/acatalog/404.html.
The problem seems to be that the page is not indexed to the sitemap.xml file and is now being blocked by Search Console Googlebot.
Has anyone any suggestions how to overcome this?

[Mike Hughes]

I'm not sure what you're expecting to happen. A 'soft 404 error' is when you serve a 404 page with a 200 success response which is what happens when you ask the server to serve your custom 404 page.

I suspect the question you should be asking is why is Google trying to index your 404 page? I don't think Google would normally do this and it suggests that they've found a link to the page somewhere that indicates they should be crawling it. Obviously, linking to it from your post above probably isn't helping matters if this is the problem.

[Mantra]

I suspect the question you should be asking is why is Google trying to index your 404 page? I don't think Google would normally do this and it suggests that they've found a link to the page somewhere that indicates they should be crawling it. Obviously, linking to it from your post above probably isn't helping matters if this is the problem.

I think the reason why Google is trying to index the 404 page has something to do with the error warning image attached below:



Looks as though I need to have robotd.txt file but what format should this take to address the issue raised and where should it reside?