Wrong Custom 404 Page Displaying

HTML Line - I would o that first thing & see if you get your colors back - BTW, you can edit the file in transmit right on the server, or edit the one on your local drive and re-upload.

Here is what the first few lines of mine looks like for reference:
<?php header("HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found"); ?>
<?php header("Status: 404 Not Found"); ?>
<!doctype html>
<html class="no-js">
<head>
soft 404’s - No I was talking about my site, thats how I found out I needed to change the custom 404 page. Hopefully this will fix that issue.

301’s - okay, the more you can do the better

Good Luck :slight_smile:

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I think I understand: check the About, Artists, Education menu choices Here.
Is that what you are after?

I’m not sure about your theme but in foundation I did it with off site pages:

  1. add an off site page
  2. in the page name (left side ui) <header> Artists </header> instead of just Artists
  3. in the page ui (right side) just leave the offsite page url blank
  4. the pages underneath are then sub pages

Add an offsite page and see if it works in your theme

Google doesn’t like duplicate pages
Also set up a 301 to redirect incase someone links to /Printables and send them to /All Printables

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OK, I will try that tonight and add that line back and see if the colors come back. I deleted the line because it was saying about an HTML page, and I changed it to php. Anyway, I’ll do that and hope that it helps. At least with the current php page, do you think that should help with Google and the 200 problem? Do you think that’s what it meant about the soft 404 error? Thank you!

Thats definitely what causes the soft 404’s and I Think this will fix it :slight_smile:

Yeah!! :smiley: I sure hope so. Thank You!!!

Yes; the About, Artists, and Education menu choices is what I am after, where if you click them, nothing happens, but then you have sub pages off of them. I heard that Google doesn’t like duplicate pages, but I didn’t know what else to do. I can’t wait to try it tonight, and see if it works in my theme. I didn’t know you could put tags in with the page names. After I try everything tonight, I’ll write again and let you know if it worked for me. I will try to get the formatting back in my 404 page, and see if I can change the menu too. Thanks so much!!

Scott,

Well, I added the HTML line back into the 404 page, and I think that fixed it. At least for me, it looks like the colors and everything are back again. I am really happy about that! :slight_smile:

I tried the offsite page thing, but in Preview, it just kept flashing and looked weird, so I didn’t want to try to upload it. It showed in the menu bar, but it was clickable, and then it would show something that looked similar to the other pages in the site, but it kept doing this flashing thing. So, I’m thinking maybe I won’t try to use that if it doesn’t seem to work properly. I’m not sure what to do about the duplicate pages though, but maybe I’ll figure something out.

Thank you again for all of your help!!

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@cynthia, I would just do a 301 from one to the other instead of duplicating until you can figure out another way.

I seem to recall a JavaScript call or something to do the empty menu thing also, if I get a chance this weekend, I’ll do a little research.

You could also ask the theme developer how to do it…

Glad the 404 page is sorted :+1:t2::+1:t2:

here is some info on htaccess http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess2.shtml

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I’m so happy about the 404 page, thank you! I tried the 301, but it doesn’t seem to work when I click the Printables on the menu. It still goes to the Printables page, and not the All Printables page. I did write the SeyDesign developer about it, but haven’t heard anything back yet. I assume it may take a while. Thanks again for your help! :slight_smile:

I bookmarked to this; it looks good! Thank you so much! :slight_smile:

Yea, the 301 is just to redirect Google and any links out there it won’t modify the behavior of your page.

There are some who believe that a empty top page can actually hurt your SEO I remember a blog post a couple years ago from @willwood about it I think. I have no idea if it is or isn’t a problem so I did a redirect from my blank top Lvl menus just in case.

OK, thanks for letting me know about that. That’s good you did the redirect on yours as you said. I like the video/header (I don’t know what they’re actually called) on your site. It seems like it would be difficult to have that first image zoom out. I thought I may do something like that in the future, but I’m not sure what to use. Yours looks nice though, and I like that!

Anyway, I’m not sure what to do about the menu anymore, but I guess I’ll just think about it for a little while. Maybe what I should do is try to create something different on one of the pages so that they’re not duplicates. Probably I’ll have to try and figure out what will work for the second page.

As always, I really appreciate all of your help! I wish there was something I could do for you. Thank You!!

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@cynthia
Hi Cynthia,
Header: That isn’t actually a video header its just an image with the Ken Burns effect.I used Joe Workman’s Impact stack for the header even though I didn’t want the full page “hero” header.
Look around on the site if you have a few mins, there’s a lot of other cool stuff.
About/history has a cool timeline feature, there are 4 typed blog feeds, shopping cart integration under class and event registration, Google Calender and map integration, transparent scrolling content over background images etc. we even have a newspaper feed (art in the news) which is automatically assembled from a bunch of RSS feeds and social media. it’s amazing the things you can do with RW and Stacks.

Menu: I would wait and see if you hear from SeyDesign & see if they say its possible with your theme.
One thing you could do is put a summary on the top level page with links to the other pages below. Re: "In this section you will find bla,bla,bla XXXpage (link) contains bla,bla,bla yyypage(linked) contains…

Kind of a section overview I guess.

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I saw this in another post but have not tried it. The OP said it worked for him.

/* Instructions - Please Read
This snippet will allow you to disable a page’s menu item from linking to the page. This is great if you want a page to act as a placeholder in the menu, forcing visitors to navigate to a sub-page under it.
1 Insert this snippet in the Javascript tab in RapidWeaver’s Page Inspector.
// Insert this snippet in the Javascript tab in RapidWeaver’s Page Inspector.
// You will need to modify the nav link list in the code below
// to contain the name of the pages that you want to disable.
document.addEventListener(“DOMContentLoaded”,function(event) {
// Add your Navigation titles to this list
var nav_titles = [‘Page 1’,‘Page 2’,‘Page 3’,‘Page 4’];
// ------------------------------------------
// Do not modify below this line
var links = document.querySelectorAll(‘ul li a’);
for (var i = 0; i < links.length; i++) {
if (nav_titles.indexOf(links[i].textContent) >= 0) links[i].href = ‘javascript:void(0)’;
}
});

2 Likes

hello Scott,

I also have the Impact Stack by Joe Workman, but haven’t used it yet. I didn’t want the full page header either. Apparently, you can use it without that, but I haven’t had the occasion to try and use/learn that yet.

I will look further at your site. You sure have a lot of interesting features! I’ve never even heard of a timeline stack like that; it looks pretty complex, but cool! As for me, I couldn’t even get my 404 page to work. :unamused:

I did receive a nice response from SeyDesign Support. They mentioned the NoLink Stack from Marathia. They also mentioned a possibility of empty menu placeholders hurting SEO. So for now, I’m still not sure what to do. I might do something like you said; as a summary overview and links for the other page. I’ll go check out more of your site, and Thank You!

1 Like

Hello,

Thank you for this script! I will keep it, just in case I decide to try it. Because of possible SEO issues, I may not create empty placeholder links in the menu bar afterall; but if I do, I’ll give this a try. Thanks again!

It’s super easy to do. There’s a bunch of predetermined ratios you can select, or you can make it a percentage of browser height. It’s worth playing around with.

Hi @cynthia, like @jabostick said, you should play with impact, even if it’s on a page you never publish, it’s very easy and very cool. Lots of deferent ways to style it. But that’s a whole different topic.

That JavaScript to disable the top lvl menus @thang found is what I remember seeing before. I just couldn’t find it :nerd_face:.

The blog post about suppressing top level menus that @willwood wrote is here. Maybe Will will see this post and comment on if adding a 301 redirect for the disabled pages is a viable alternative or just wishful thinking on the part of an old hack (me :grin:).

Yes, I will. It looks good, so that’s why I purchased it, but haven’t actually tried to use it much yet. Thanks for letting me know about the predetermined ratios!