Re: Re: 404 redirects "stolen" by provider

On Fri, 2010-04-09 at 21:03 +0100, Nathan Rixham wrote: > 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! > Sending any headers other than a 200 is still inviting this dubious ISP to redirect it's customers to its own pages in an effort to gain revenue. The ideal solution is to use mod_rewrite within the .htaccess file, as this is completely transparent and the end user is non the wiser. Thanks, Ash http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk