Every link has two ends - fixing 404s at the recipient

"They have printed the wrong link." Thus starts a frustrated post on the Save the Train web site, worried that a link in the local newspaper to our support pledge page ends up at a "404". And, yes, they have dropped the newspaper a line too, hoping to catch them before the online edition goes "printed".

But every link has two ends ... and since the error in the URL still leaves the URL pointing to our server, and just the wrong place on it, a very short mod_rewrite request means that the paper's site is now pointing at the correct place - in addition to the URL that everyone else is using.

-bash-2.05b$ cat .htaccess

RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule pledge$ pledge.html

-bash-2.05b$

So that's /pledge linked to /pledge.html

It's not the first time I've done this "trick" and indeed, given a substantial number of erroneous follows, I can sometimes spot such things in our log analyses. In this case we caught it very early, though!
(written 2008-04-02 06:33:43)

Associated topics are indexed under

A606 - Web Application Deployment - Apache httpd - log files and log tools
  [1796] libwww-perl and Indy Library in your server logs? - (2008-09-13)
  [1780] Server overloading - turns out to be feof in PHP - (2008-09-01)
  [1761] Logging Cookies with the Apache httpd web server - (2008-08-20)
  [1656] Be careful of misreading server statistics - (2008-05-28)
  [1503] Web page (http) error status 405 - (2008-01-12)
  [1237] What proportion of our web traffic is robots? - (2007-06-19)
  [376] What brings people to my web site? - (2005-07-13)

W512 - Web and Intranet - Site Design Aspects
  [2214] Global Index to help you find resources - (2009-06-01)
  [1353] Mood shots - (2007-09-16)
  [1054] UK legal requirements for your commercial web site - (2007-01-27)
  [1047] Maintainable code - some positive advice - (2007-01-21)
  [1015] Search engine placement - long term strategy and success - (2006-12-30)
  [918] Databases needn't be frightening, hard or expensive - (2006-11-08)
  [859] Put the answer in context - it may be printed - (2006-09-08)
  [823] An excellent use for a visitor count? - (2006-08-05)
  [795] Remember a site's non-technical issues too - (2006-07-07)
  [718] Protecting images from theft - (2006-05-12)
  [649] Denial of Service ''attack'' - (2006-03-17)
  [556] Colour doesn't have to mean colourful - (2006-01-06)
  [510] Dynamic Web presence - next generation web site - (2005-11-29)
  [391] One mans pleasure is another mans poison - (2005-07-26)
  [352] Improved mining techniques! - (2005-06-19)
  [345] Spotting a denial of service attack - (2005-06-12)
  [319] Accommodation and landing pages - (2005-05-21)
  [288] Colour blindness for web developers - (2005-04-22)
  [261] Putting a form online - (2005-03-29)
  [229] A fortunate accident - (2005-02-27)

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Some other Articles

Automating processes through Expect
Replacing the last comma with an and
Cambidge - Tcl, Expect and Perl courses
Fresher tutor, better course
Every link has two ends - fixing 404s at the recipient
Comparing hotels - as a guest and from the proprietors view
Selling curry to the chinese takeaway
First Great Western Weekend
Please support improvements in our train service
Keep the client experience easy - single server contact point

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