Re: 404 redirects "stolen" by provider

Merlin Morgenstern wrote: > Hello, > > I am running a website under apache and php where I do redirects on 404 > errors: > > apache conf: > ErrorDocument 404 /subapp_members/search_user.php > > This is done to allow ULRs with usernames like this: > www.server.com/username > > The PHP script search_user.php looks in a db if the user name is > existent and if yes shows his member page. If the name is not existent > it displays an internal 404 message. > > This worked perfectly for recent years until now. Some users complain > that they do see advertisement instead of the page. A research showed > that they are using a provider called "unitymedia". As soon as a site > has a page not found error it redirects them to their own advertisement > page. This is true for all pages on the net. e.b. ebay.com/testing shows > their advertisement. > > Has somebody an idea on how to fix that from my site? > > Thank you for any help, > yup, use a 303 See Other first of all ErrorDocument 303 /subapp_members/search_user.php then continue as normal; if you don't find the user set the status header to 404 and show your internal 404. They may never see the internal 404; but in many browsers they won't any ways as most delegate it through to a "can't find, search with the google?? :-)" type page. regards!