This is never going to happen, it has been requested many times and every time I see Dan, Ben or anyone else from Realmac respond they say it will not happen. Not what I am sure you want to hear, but I do not know of any other apps that do this either.
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Good. I will delete all my files every so often and republish. That will solve my problem, although more work than I feel I should need to do, and I donāt care about SEO.
@zeebe Thanks for the info. So no need to ask again.
Maybe it would be useful to have a file & folder list of the project exported every time an ftp-upload is done. If RW would be able to start scripts after an upload, everything else could be done by 3rd-party scripts automatically. Use the export-list and history (list of last upload) to clean up. Anyone knows if that is possible to get this list? That would help me a lot. The debug-ftp-option is not useful for that! I just want to be able to script the problem for me.
@RichardLW Thanks for pointing out the error-page problem. Totally forgot the people putting bookmarks on those pages. Thanks!
I guess in 7.3.1 they are telling you if your filename changes from .html to .php and that you need to delete one with an FTP app, this is a little bit of a help. I have not seen it yet, but I have heard it is there.
Steve,
This is not a helpful response.
Is this a warning that appears when the file name is changed, or something noted in the manual?
No clue, have not seen the warning myself yet.
So David @thang ā what is the best way to fix my old 404s that I have deleted in the past? Iāve searched the forum and found several posts about htc access, or creating 404 pages in RW, but not sure what to follow. Iāve already deleted these pages, so I donāt want to add anything to the site again.
thanks, Lisa
For me I create my 404 pages in RW just like any other page https://www.dma-ni.com/nosuchpage
- It needs to be in the root of your project (same level as your home page)
- It needs to be given the name 404.shtml (note the āsā) in the RW inspector
- If you do put a link(s) on the page then make sure they are full urlās NOT the RW simple page link
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Yes, a single 404 page in the root of the site is for the whole site.
As for the shtml extention, Iāve no idea why it works but for me it does.
As for the single link I have, others have put links to all their primary pages (home, blog, shop etc), I only needed the one for the DMA site
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Paul, That is interesting info. Thanks.
I think you are combining the Redirect idea with the idea of a custom 404 page. Setting up a redirect will make those old links to the old URLās go to the new URL of the new page that replace the old one.
You do this in your .htaccess file on your web server:
Put something like this in your .htacess file:
Redirect 301 /oldpage.html http://www.yoursite.com/newpage.html
Redirect 301 /client-store/gifts/keychains/ http://www.yoursite.com/new-page-for-keychaims/
or
Redirect 301 /client-store/gifts/keychains/ /new-page-for-keychains/
I think it will work with both the relative URL and the Full URL. I have done it with the regular URL on my site.
So the old URL comes first, then a space, and then the new URL. You will make an entry for each page you redirect.
The idea is that the search engines will replace the old URL with the new URL, so the corresponding new page is found instead of the old URL becoming a 404 error.
I havenāt tried Paulās 404 method but this from Gary at Doobox works and is good if you want a custom 404 page:
Then add this to your htaccess file :
ErrorDocument 404 /404.html
and as Steve mentioned in the next post on that page:
Body {
display: none;
}
and
javascript window.location = āhttps://yoursite/friendly404.pageā
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David-
No doubt I am confusing things lol. I just want to clean up those old links that donāt exist anymore. I know Google will eventually update, but I didnāt know until recently that it was wrong to just delete without a redirect to fix 401 pages. Most of them will NOT be redirected to a new page, just a āthis page doesnāt exist anymore, please go to the homeā page. or, if thatās not good for Google, then an auto redirect to the home page?
See, I am confused 
So based on that, which one should I do? Too many options!
thanks, Lisa
I think itās worth it to redirect to a new page if there is one. Iām not sure if itās better to let the old URLās which do not have a new page just resolve to the 404 or to redirect them to you homepage.
If you want an old page to redirect to your homepage you can do this in .htaccess:
Redirect 301 /oldpage.html http://www.yoursite.com/
otherwise you can just do nothing and as you said, Google will eventually remove the pages from their index.
As Doug said:
Keep in mind that any backlinks (someone in a blog or article linking to a page on your site) will āreactivateā the page.
When the robot crawls a site it doesnāt check āright nowā to see if an URL is still around, it just catalogs it.
If you have a page that is showing up in the SERP, it probably took some effort to get it there. By just deleting the page without a redirect your losing all your āSEO juiceā that page gained your site. Using a 301 redirect will help keep that ranking.
The other thing you should consider is your customers that have bookmarked a page or added it to a reading list. If you just delete it, they get a 404 page.
So those are the reasons to make a Redirect.
Yes, itās true that when people use a link to a page on your site that no longer exists they will get a ā404 not foundā page. If itās just the generic one, there are no links to your site, so that is why a custom 404 page is good - it can be styled just like any other page on your site and have all the navigation links that you have on all your site pages.
Hope that makes things a little clearer.
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thank you Iāve been doing my real job lately (photography) and not had time to work on my website, so Iāll get back to that this week and try that.
Iāll chime in in this, IMOā¦
Its always best to redirect to the new page that holds the content the user was after.
Second best is to redirect to a page that may get them there. ex. If you used to sell keychains but no longer do, then maybe redirect to an available products page.
Third best send to a custom 404 page with a message and navigation options maybe even a site search.
Last, send them someplace totally unexpected like your home page leaving them wondering how they got there without any explaination.
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Aha itās making a little more sense now, thank you allā¦ Redirect to something similar. I can do that.
Which makes me now think of the questionā¦ once I stop seeing the 404sā¦ will I be able to delete them eventually?
Not sure I follow, delete them from where?
If you have a 301 redirect in your .htaccess then you wonāt get a 404 from that URL, a 404 is really meant to deal with typos of a URL, etc.
If you move something you should use a 301
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