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Multiple 410 Gone landing pages - Possible?

coachm

11:47 am on Jul 10, 2012 (gmt 0)

Trying to get rid of lower quality section, using the advice of using 410's, and just wondering if I can redirect via .htaccess to different 410 pages for different directories.

So, I have two directories I want to kill off. I want users to go to page A for directory A, and page B for directory B.

As opposed to landing on the same page for both.

Possible?

lucy24

4:51 pm on Jul 10, 2012 (gmt 0)

Sure. Easiest way is to put a separate htaccess in each directory that you want to kill, naming a separate ErrorDocument 410 for each one. Or equivalent in <directory> sections if you've got control of the config file. The error page doesn't have to live in the directory it "belongs" to.

But please note that "redirect" and "410" are-- or should be-- mutually exclusive. You're not redirecting to an error page; you're displaying a page in response to the error. That means you name the ErrorDocument as

/whereitlives/docname.html

NOT as

http://www.example.com/whereitlives et cetera.

Er. That was assuming Apache. If you're on That Other Server, someone will come along and translate.

g1smd

10:13 pm on Jul 10, 2012 (gmt 0)

Correct Answer!

ErrorDocument for 410 errors configured "per directory", with each one showing the message you want users to see.

Serve the 410 response at the originally requested URL. 410 is never a redirect.