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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[joeychgo]

php ---- 5.4.20

Plugin Version 1.0.0

I just upgraded to the current version, same issues.

[BirdOPrey5]

Wow... 1.0.0 is a super-simple script... there is really nothing that can go wrong. A lot of people seem to be using it without this issue. Is it possible there is something on your site that somehow overrides the data sent when a 404 or similar error message is generated?

I really can't conceive how this mod could be causing the error because, especially version 1.0.0, you can see the only plugins are on error_ hooks which mean the code isn't even ran until vBulletin is already set to produce an error. If vBulletin is in error mode for example then the css isn't going to be returned anyway on a call to css.php for example.

Perhaps some sort of caching system that reads a 404 error and caches a 404 error page for a short time rather than returning then passing the data to vBulletin and waiting for a real page to be generated?

I'm kind of grasping at straws here... Are there any PHP errors in the error logs when this happens?

[joeychgo]

Nope, no errors in the logs....

[Alibass]

Originally Posted by joeychgo

Nope, no errors in the logs....

I just went to your website and get this error ising IE, FF and Chrome

Invalid Page URL. If this is an error and the page should exist, please  contact the system administrator and tell them how you got this message.

Have you changed anything in your settings/site name/url/contact details or do you possibly have an old cookie

[joeychgo]

haven't changed anything

where did you see that

[AusPhotography]

PHP 5.4.29, Apache 2.4.9, MySQL 5.6.16, vB4.2.2pl1 -- all goodness here.

[joeychgo]

Originally Posted by AusPhotography

PHP 5.4.29, Apache 2.4.9, MySQL 5.6.16, vB4.2.2pl1 -- all goodness here.

No its not...

I get this when I click LOG IN on your site

[BirdOPrey5]

Originally Posted by joeychgo

No its not...

I get this when I click LOG IN on your site

I don't... Tried Chrome and IE... What version of IE are you using? Looks old?

[BirdOPrey5]

Originally Posted by joeychgo

Nope, no errors in the logs....

I see you have vB Optimise and DBSEO... My guess is a conflict with one of these.

It is my understand DBSEO has added this feature (or will soon) - double check it's not trying to do the same thing already.

However now you have issues with the photography site a browser issue is possible too.

[joeychgo]

I don't have either..... vB Optimise or DBSEO

Browser issue is possible, but I only have trouble with sites that have this mod installed. It also is happening on 2 separate computers, so its likely not a browser issue past a common setting.