Review - easyClick 404

Stop page not found 404 errors with this detection & redirection script.

Learn how to create custom 404 error pages & much much more…

How many times have you been surfing the internet and seen a "Sorry this page was not found" generic 404 error message? What did you do? I usually go back to Google and start my search where I left off before encountering the bad link.

404 errors happen - that is something webmasters have to accept. Whether it is an error in our coding, or that we have deleted pages from our server. To stop this unprofessional appearance, we can create a custom 404 error page - lets call it 404error.html, and edit the .htacess file on our servers to include something like:

ErrorDocument 404 /404error.html

That way, when someone requests a file on your server that is not there, they are redirected to your custom 404error.html page which then will explain "Sorry, the page you hare looking for has been removed. Please go to the homepage ………………"

This works. However, you the webmaster don’t find out how many 404 errors occur on your site. I found out about a script called easyClick 404. I installed easyClick 404 on a site (which is a fairly new site and one I thought had no incorrect links). The first day I received several e-mails.

Some told me about 404 errors that had occured and the pages that could not be found. These e-mails contain the following information:

Date:
User requested for:
User Details:
IP addr:
Browser:
Referred by:

Not only does it tell you when and what page, it also gives you important information like where this page was referred from, the browser and IP address of the user who tried to find the page. By using these e-mails I was able to check the links on this site, and correct them so that 404 errors no longer show up. This is much better than just using a custom 404 error page. Now you have control over the errors and the information to fix them as they occur. Wow! What a fabulous script. I am now in the process of setting up my other sites this way.

But there is more…

Besides getting these 404 error message e-mails, I also started getting daily e-mails telling me my site had been spidered by Googlebot, or Slurp, or some other internet spider. easyClick 404 e-mails you when these events happen too (only if you do not have a robots.txt file).

How does easyClick 404 work?

With easyClick 404, you edit your .htaccess file so that all 404 errors are pointing to the easyClick404 PHP script. When a page not found 404 error occurs, it does a few things:

• easyClick 404 tries to find the correct page automatically and redirect the user to it.
• easyClick 404 sends you an e-mail every time a 404 page not found error occurs with details.
• If it is a search engine spider, it sends you an e-mail telling you which spider and when.

More uses of easyClick 404 script

• Use it to track adds from forums, newsgroups, newspapers etc.
• Track e-mail responses
• Prevent theft by opportunists by being notified of suspicious activity on your site. Many burglars will try various combinations of thankyou.html etc to see if there is a product thank you page with download information. With easyClick 404, you now can prevent this type of theft.
• Find out when your new page starts getting traffic.

Overall I have been extremely impressed with easyClick 404 and its potential. You do need to be confident uploading files and changing priviledges on files, but set-up is not that difficult. I believe the author will even set it up for you for a nominal charge.

We love this script. I am sure you will too. Do away with page not found 404 errors by installing easyClick 404.

Read more about easyClick 404 error detection & redirection script on the authors homepage.