Ever find yourself wondering if people are are going to your new DNN website, but they may still have an old link, or a search engine sent them to a page that is not found? Why not spice your DNN up with a new module created specifically for site migrations and url assistance.
HJT Created this module for several large high-traffic volume websites it runs. The idea was to create something simple and easy to understand. In the process, they found another use for this Module. A nice way to create simple URLs for their end users. Instead of sending them to a page that has 3 directories and a url param, instead send them to something short and create a redirect to send them to the correct page.
Features:
- 404 Detection from both IIS and Asp.net
- 404 Tracking for undefined redirects – Lets you know links that people are going to you haven't created a redirect for
- Create shorter URLs, even if they redirect to a different domain on a different server
- Wild Card Forwarding – Forward the rest of a path to another path
- 404 Header code along with 301 permanent redirect header codes (optional) for search engines to update their links.
- Tested on IIS 6 and 7 (2003 server, and 2008 server)
Requirements:
- You will need to have access to IIS to make a change. If you are in a shared hosting environment, some control panels allow you to make changes to 404 error pages. You will just need the ability to configure the 404 error to go to a relative path. Most ISP’s will do this for you if you don’t have access.
- Sql Server 2005 or 2008
- IIS 6+ (2003 server, or greater)
- DotNetNuke 4.5 or greater
Installation:
Installing the DotNetNuke 404 redirector is simple. Follow these steps and you will be up in 10 minutes.
- Install the 404 module from within your DNN control panel
- Create a new Page where your 404 module will be installed. Make sure to give “All Users” access to it.
- Log into your server (or your shared hosting account), and adjust where 404’s are sent.
2008 Server Example:
2003 Server Example:
- Add the 404 module to your page.
- Edit the module settings like you would any module:
- Edit your “404” page that users will get if you have not defined a 404 redirect:
- Click on “Redirect Data” at the top and add some new redirect information:
When you are adding the data, you will see your redirects appear above the input boxes:
- After some time, you will begin to see new urls showing up in your “Undefined Redirects” that indicates nothing was redirected, and your generic 404 message was shown to the user. Taking these missing URLs. The Hit Count will show how many hits to that URL have been made. You can arrange by the count by clicking on “Hits” in the column.
- Test your work. If things are working correctly, you will just need to go to an old URL to see if it redirects you, and also go to a page that doesn't exist or is not defined in your redirect page.
- To get asp.net files to redirect, you need to edit your existing web.config file.
Inside the System.Web XML node, you need to put the following code:
Notice how we didn’t specify an asp.net file. Doing this will send the 404 to IIS, and IIS will forward it to your current Portals 404 handler page.
Some things to note:
This is an absolute MUST module if you are using Google sitemaps or anything that must return real http error codes (404, not found). With out this module, you can still do a 404 page, but it does not do any redirection, and wont tell Google or other search engines that it really is a 404 page.
Upgrade Protection:
We are very much about making sure our customers are happy. You have 1 year of upgrade protections with our products. If we release a new version of our software, it is available to you for free. To get this, you must email us from the email account used to purchase the module so we can verify your previous purchase.
Licensing:
This version is currently open to licensing one DNN install (unlimited portals, but one install) server. You can use this module as many times as you like on the same install. We only ask that if you are going to be putting it on different servers, that you pickup an additional license from the site you bought it from. This helps us when it comes to support and new enhancements to the existing product.
Happy 404ing!