Mini Mods - HTTP Error Response Codes by BOP5 (Soft 404 Solution)

Brought to you by BirdOPrey5 / Qapla.com

This issue was brought to my attention by Sherrie at TAZ in this thread.

The issue is that when Google crawls a site and runs into the vBulletin No Permission message or other standard vBulletin error pages vBulletin gives the standard "200" HTTP response code which means everything is OK, even though there is no real content on these pages. Therefore Google considers these "soft errors" and they can damage overall SEO of your site if there are too many of them.

What this does is make vBulletin return standard HTTP "Error" responses- by default 403 (Not Authorized) for No Permission pages and 404 (Not Found) for general error messages. When Google sees these responses (as opposed to 200) it knows not to bother indexing the page and everyone is happy.

As of version 2.2 new options have been added to return custom response codes when the forum is closed or when the forum is busy. It will also send a retry header telling the crawler they can try again later. As of version 2.0 there is also a separate response code for search.php errors.

A limitation of this mod is it works best with PHP 5.4.0 or higher. As of version 2.0 If you are on an older version of PHP it may not work, but it should not cause any errors, so it is worth trying.

There are no instructions, once installed it is enabled by default. In Admin CP -> Settings -> Options -> HTTP Error Responses by BOP5 you can enable/disable the mod and choose the response codes you want for the different error types. You can use any standard HTTP response code available from this list at wikipedia.

The mod works fine on VB 3.x or 4.x including VB 3.8.8 (still in Beta) and VB 4.2.2.

To test that it is working use a free online status checker such as: http://httpstatus.io/
(Note the site will cache your result for a while so test with a unique URL each time.)

Before you install the mod any URL that will show a no-permission or other vBulletin error will show a status code of 200. After installing the same page will show a 403, 404, or other code that you have configured.

Added Boothby as a "co-author" as thanks for his contribution of code and ideas. :up:

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[BirdOPrey5]

I'm not sure about using it with the dragon byte mod, no- as I don't have DBSEO installed and never intend to install it- so I will never be testing my mods against it- just like I never tested them against VBSEO. It is most certainly use at your own risk.

I don't believe there will be a conflict. I also don't know when it will be added to DBSEO- but I was in communication with them and was told they do intend to add the feature. I suppose plans can always change but it is such an easy feature I doubt they would change their mind.

[krimznheidiz]

There is an error show " The following dependencies were not met:
This product is not compatible with version 5.3.28 of PHP. (Compatible starting with 5.4.0)"

[BirdOPrey5]

Originally Posted by krimznheidiz

There is an error show " The following dependencies were not met:
This product is not compatible with version 5.3.28 of PHP. (Compatible starting with 5.4.0)"

That means that your server is running PHP 5.3.28 but I made it clear you need at least PHP 5.4.0 in the description of this mod. It will not work on your server.

[karnevil]

Hi BOP5 and all,

Question for you if I may

I regularly check google webmaster tools for crawl errors such as this, on our forum www.legalbeagles.info/forums/ we have a VIP area http://www.legalbeagles.info/forums/...-MEMBERS-FORUM which google obviously does not have crawl access to.

If a member posts(publicly and crawlable) a link to a thread/post contained in the VIP area google crawls that post, tries to follow the link and comes up with the no permissions page.

This is then logged as a soft 404 error in webmaster tools. What is the best way to either return a different code that will not affect the crawl errors or prevent it from returning an error?

Would this mod fix this?

[BirdOPrey5]

Originally Posted by karnevil

Hi BOP5 and all,

Question for you if I may

I regularly check google webmaster tools for crawl errors such as this, on our forum www.legalbeagles.info/forums/ we have a VIP area http://www.legalbeagles.info/forums/...-MEMBERS-FORUM which google obviously does not have crawl access to.

If a member posts(publicly and crawlable) a link to a thread/post contained in the VIP area google crawls that post, tries to follow the link and comes up with the no permissions page.

This is then logged as a soft 404 error in webmaster tools. What is the best way to either return a different code that will not affect the crawl errors or prevent it from returning an error?

Would this mod fix this?

This is exactly the mod to fix this. Under the default setup Google would instead get a 403 (not authorized) code on such pages.

[karnevil]

Excellent thank you,

We are running vB 4.2.1, not sure of the php version as yet, how would I check this?

[karnevil]

Found it, PHP Version 5.2.10

So reading back this mod will not work for us

[Alibass]

Originally Posted by karnevil

Found it, PHP Version 5.2.10

So reading back this mod will not work for us

Check with your hosting company, they may have a simple line code to add to your .htaccess to access 5.4

[karnevil]

Will do thanks.

Just looking through the templates to see where nopermission generates a 404 error to see if this can be modified

[BirdOPrey5]

Originally Posted by Alibass

Check with your hosting company, they may have a simple line code to add to your .htaccess to access 5.4

If you do upgrade to PHP 5.4.x you must upgrade to VB 4.2.2 as well. You might as well upgrade to VB 4.2.2 first.

Originally Posted by karnevil

Will do thanks.

Just looking through the templates to see where nopermission generates a 404 error to see if this can be modified

Fairly sure it isn't in the templates. If it is expressly set at all it would be in the PHP code.