As per our e-mail exchange, we'd like to request the ability to do 301 redirects.  It's not something everyone will understand the value of, but it is a very good idea.  It would benefit everyone, but especially those switching an existing site to a WA site.

Here are some additional details of why they are important.  As per a previous email exchange from Dmitry, I'll post these comments here...

Regarding the 301 redirects issue listed below, please take a look at www.TheJungleMap.com. It is our blog and links significantly throughout the site to various pages on our training site - www.HippoIMT.com.

You will note that currently all of those links are dead. They point to a 404 error page. This is because the naming structure of our site changed completely when we went from a standard website to a WA site.

Thankfully, this site is under our control, so we can redesign the template and have them point to the new links.

However, if this site was not under our control, we would have dead links out there pointing into 404 error pages.

In fact, we do have this very scenario. Other sites have pointed to our old site and we are losing those visitors.

The way to fix this would be to create 301 redirects on your server that would automatically send any visitors to these specific pages (that no longer exist) to the appropriate corresponding page on the new WA site. 301s also have the added benefit of telling GOOGLE that the equity of any links to the old pages should actually be given to the new page. 301 redirects are considered "permanent redirects".

Another method that might help would be a custom 404 error page that says: "This page no longer exists, please click here to go to the home page".

The current 404 error page causes visitors to go back and give up.

 

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Interested in learning how to market your website? SEO, Google AdWords, Blogging classes all available at www.HippoIMT.com Now a Wild Apricot site!

This problem is exactly why we are waiting to get friendly url's prior to migrating.  As far as I can tell, being able to recreate all of our pages with the same url (ending in .html) as they currently have will eliminate any 301/404 issues.  We create the new site to mirror the old, repoint the url, and we migrate seamlessly.

I can see where a custom 404 page gives a nice package effect for someone that types an incorrect url. 

I'm assuming from your comments that the 301's would be created on the WA server, since any other place would be useless once you migrate over to WA.  I could see that the 301 redirect could be useful for someone that is revamping their site and changing their url names I suppose.  But you could basically do the same by just keeping the pag/url in place and re-purposing it.

Is there any way we can create a custom 404 error page?  Whenever someone comes to my site and tries to go to a page that does not exist, they just get an error.  It does not say how to get back to my home page.

 This is especially important with the new "friendly urls".  If anyone that is already using WA sends someone to an old page, it simply gives an error.

 This prevents me from using the function.  There are other sites that link to my pages.  If I change the name, the link breaks.

Simple 301 redirects would fix this.

A custom 404 error page would be nice too.

Corey

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Interested in learning how to market your website? SEO, Google AdWords, Blogging classes all available at www.HippoIMT.com Now a Wild Apricot site!

We, probably like most WA clients, migrated from a previous website. That previous site was already integrated throughout the web, with links to us from all over and comprehensive search engine results.

 So when we switched to WA, we lost all of that value because our pages are not named the same so any hard links to our site are now broken and when you search for us, you get a lot of defunct links. The obvious solution is to name the pages the same, but for various reasons that is not always possible or desirable.

I would ideally like a way to cusomize a .htaccess file as well as a 404 error page. However, I recognize that might be overkill and cumbersome for WA to integrate. So my suggestion is to offer a catch all, customizable 404 error page. So any page that is within our domain, but does not have a current page, would go to this 404 error page. This would improve user experience, minimize lost leads, and capitalize on existing SEO.

For an even simpler solution, you could, by default, make the 404 error page an automatically generated sitemap from our WA site and let us just put a little intro text on it, like you do for the directory search.

 Loosing our existing equity in SEO was a big blow to our club.

Making a custom 404 error page is also on my "list of things to do." Would like to see this capability introduced.

I hope I am not intruding.

 

 

If you use WA as a landing page and have your own domain name ;

do you use your own "domain name.com" at WA  via the domain name 

or

do you  use http://domain name.memberlodge.com via the Free web address provided by Wild Apricot

 

 

 

 

you can set up a .htaccess file on the webhosting server of the 

Hi Roger, Not quite sure exactly what you mean. We have a custom domain name registration through a third party and it points directly to the IP address of WA. We have no other hosting. Since the .htaccess file needs to go in the top level directory of your host, and we don't have access to this through WA, we cannot add one.

Anybody else is interested in this?
Please comment.

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

I would appreciate comments from everyone if this is an important need for your organization.

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

Currently
If someone mistypes an address on your site, or clicks an old link to a page that you may have deleted they get a standard blue "Resource not found" error. While there is a "home" and "back" button to take people either to your site or the referring page, there is no branding on it as well as any identification that this goes with your site.

Desired
In the same way that Wild Apricot lets you create a customizable Authorization required message for people who try to access content that is in a Restricted area, have the ability to create a custom "Resource not found" page or message. This would let you create a custom message to let people know what they can do next, and also provide your organization's branding so that the wayward visitor feels safe.

This is a great idea!

Yes, I would be interested.  It's nice having a "custom" error page and redirect pages.

 Thank you!

Please do this ASAP!

This is such an awesome system that I figured when I signed up that it would just be part of the package. It is an absolute necessity when moving a website to a new platform. Especially with a chamber of commerce website that is linked to from so many other websites. 

I need to be able to create a custom error page with a sitemap to all of our new pages. At the very least I must be able to direct 404 errors to our home page. If it is already available please tell me how to do it. I couldn't find instructions in the help files.

 Thanks so much!

Absolutely want this!

 

Search engines still have our old website and crawl errors happen alot (1000 a day)

 

having a custom crash page (a dirtbike rider crashed for us!) and then redirect to the website homepage after 5 seconds would be an asset)

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http://www.secondgearclub.com


Email me

Soda:

It is an absolute necessity when moving a website to a new platform.

We moved our site from another platform also, and many links from the old site are now broken. Members are complaining.

A custom 404 page and/or 301 redirects would definitely be helpful. Otherwise I'll have to create a slew of hidden pages that do nothing but link to the new page. :-(

Can you comment - couldn't you name the new pages the same way the old ones were named? (Using Custom URL feature)

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

I would like to cast my vote for this enhancement as well.

We are just about to transfer from a CMS system that we used for about eight years over to Wild Apricot.  There are many links in Google and other sites that go to pages on our old site with funny URLs like http://www.oursite.org/content/?page=INFO&nmenu=109.  Users will see a non-branded Resource Not Found page with a small Home link.

 

I see two options.

1. Allow for a custom 'page not found' page (preferred option)
2. Send all users to the home page

Thanks - Dennis

I realise that this thread has been kicking about now for a while, but custom error pages are starting to become a must-have for me.

 

Since the launch of 4.2 in may, there has been an outage every week since to apply updates.  Because I am in Australia, this outage occurs during peak time (about 6.30pm) and is causing me a world of pain as the error page users are greeted with in no way reflects my site. The fact that I send out my weekly newsletter on a Wednesday afternoon makes things worse as often people get home to read the newsletter only to find they can't and all the links send them to a weird error page.

 

I'd also love to be able to 301 redirects between www version and non-www version of my domain to enhance SEO by removing   SEO canonicalisation and removing the potential for my content to be considered duplicate.

If anyone has worked out how we do this, please point me in the right direction! 

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Kerrie-Anne
My Social Circle - Social Events & Activities Network
www.mysocialcircle.com.au

Definitely have a need for this - general error page would be great when there is an outage on the site (outages happen at peak times for those of us in Australia), would be nice to be able to assure users that they haven't landed somewhere weird!

 

301 redirects between www/non-www domain be good too for seo purposes. 

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Kerrie-Anne
My Social Circle - Social Events & Activities Network
www.mysocialcircle.com.au

I'm moving from a custom written site to WA.  During the move, I'm using the opportunitiy to refactor the content and layout.  The pages do not map cleanly directly to the old URLs.   A custom error page would be very nice feature.

I have merged several threads related to same problem

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Evgeny
Product Design Team

We can't rename new pages the same as the old pages because the old pages have an .asp or .htm extension.  Without something like this, we just totally lose our old search engine standing and have to start over.  As other's have commented, old links may be broken with no way to recover.  I think this is an important item.

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Judy Nelson-Moore
NMPCA

Hi Judy,

I am not sure  why are you saying that .asp or .htm extensions are a problem. You can use Custmo URLs feature in Wild Apricot and have any page with custom Url like contact.asp or about.htm

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

Thanks, it never occurred to me that I could put the extension on the custom URL!  I'll try it. 

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Judy Nelson-Moore
NMPCA

Custom URLs don't really help much when the old page was either a (partial) member directory list or an individual member profile. 301 redirects would fix this. 404s are counterproductive.