5164 shaares
38 private links
38 private links
To provide useful and specific information to the user, it is necessary to define the possible causes of a 404 error. Here are four possible causes:
- The user mistyped the URL or followed an out-of-date bookmark. These are grouped together because we’ll see that it’s not possible to distinguish one from the other.
- The user encountered a 404 error because of a broken link within my site.
- The 404 error results from a broken link returned by a search engine.
- The 404 error was caused by a broken link on another website, but not a search engine.
In each of these cases, the 404 provides information about the specific cause of the error. If the broken link is either on my website or someone else’s website, but not returned via a search engine, the Perl script sends me, the developer, an e-mail about the broken link, including the URL the link points to and the page the user was trying to reach.