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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[RichieBoy67]

Originally Posted by CAG CheechDogg

Use this link, http://httpstatus.io/ ...once you put your link to test, once the test is done hover over the 200 code green box and you should see the response code change ....

If I understand how this works, the test gives you a 200 in the little green box but you see the response code once you hover over it ....hope that helps and hope I am giving you correct information lol ...

Thanks bro, awesome!

Just to verify here I am doing this correctly, One test would be to put a non existent path into the form and it should show a 404 error instead of the Vbulletin no permission page?

I think I may be a little confused as to what this does. This does not change error pages but rather response header code so those pages are no longer crawled therefor reducing soft errors and the like?

[CAG CheechDogg]

Originally Posted by RichieBoy67

Thanks bro, awesome!

Just to verify here I am doing this correctly, One test would be to put a non existent path into the form and it should show a 404 error instead of the Vbulletin no permission page?

I think I may be a little confused as to what this does. This does not change error pages but rather response header code so those pages are no longer crawled therefor reducing soft errors and the like?

Yes correct, if I understand it correctly that's how its supposed to work ...

[BirdOPrey5]

Originally Posted by RichieBoy67

Thanks bro, awesome!

Just to verify here I am doing this correctly, One test would be to put a non existent path into the form and it should show a 404 error instead of the Vbulletin no permission page?

I think I may be a little confused as to what this does. This does not change error pages but rather response header code so those pages are no longer crawled therefor reducing soft errors and the like?

Not exactly...

This mod kicks in when vBulletin shows a vBulletin generated error message.

One way to test it is to test a thread URL such as-

http://www.qapla.com/mods/showthread.php/1203

(you will see that URL works and response code will be 200)

then change the thread number to something much higher, that you don't have a valid thread for like-

http://www.qapla.com/mods/showthread.php/999999999999

Now that should return a 404 response code... If this mod wasn't enabled then that URL would return a 200 response code. The 404 proves the mod is working.

Be aware when testing on your own forum the exact URL may be cached by the status checker... so if you test before the mod is installed be sure to use a different URL (even if it is just a little different) when you test again after installing the mod.

If you used a URL that doesn't exist at all like

http://www.qapla.com/mods/shugugaga

That returns a 404 response because your server is producing a 404 page, vBulletin isn't running at all in this case, it has nothing to do with this mod.

[BirdOPrey5]

Originally Posted by Mecho

no outage , and i've updated to the latest version today to see the result.

the thing is that traffic has been dropped in last few weeks. it can be from many different things but in this case i'm afraid that this plugin send the same wrong message for exists threads to search engines and indexed links goes down and traffic either.

that's a guess only. correct me if i'm wrong.

thanks

I really don't believe this mod could have caused the Google issues- the hook it runs on simply isn't even executed unless vBulletin is already showing an error message. The error message must be called first, it can't call the error message itself.

[puertoblack2003]

Originally Posted by BirdOPrey5

I really don't believe this mod could have caused the Google issues- the hook it runs on simply isn't even executed unless vBulletin is already showing an error message. The error message must be called first, it can't call the error message itself.

This mod has nothing to do with it. I had that issue way before installing this.I had an occasion server hiccup when sometimes it'll go off line for a couple of minutes. i'm guessing during the time google is indexing. If i remember correctly google has a feature when that happens to mark as fix.. can remember though.

[tbworld]

Nice work @BirdoPrey, and thanks @Boothby!

[AusPhotography]

Thanks, working perfectly

[BirdOPrey5]

Updated to version 2.1.1. Fixed error on for VB 3.x users on legacy PHP versions (below 5.4.0)

[joeychgo]

Joe, see this thread...

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forum...l-css-problems

[BirdOPrey5]

Originally Posted by joeychgo

Joe, see this thread...

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forum...l-css-problems

What version of PHP is on your server?

What exact version of this plugin was installed?