[development] Tracking, fixing and redirecting 404's

[Mike Gifford]

Hello,

This has been discussed a number of times, but there doesn't seem to  
be any comprehensive response to dealing with 404's.  The best  
solution I've seen is to send a user to a search form.  While this is  
better than showing them an error page it's not ideal either.

I'm now in the process of migrating a largish static site to Drupal.

What I would like to see is:

1) A page listing like admin/logs' Page Not Found reference but tracking
	- The most frequently incorrectly accessed page (in the log's history)
	- The biggest source of incorrect links (separated by internal &  
external links)
	- It should also be divided into those links that have specified  
redirects and those links which do not yet have a specified redirect  
defined (see below)
2) A link from the summary list above (next to details) to a redirect  
link that would allow you to indicate where that page should go.
	- This  should list the redirect and allow you to edit it (if it is  
defined), or indicate that you can define the redirect.
	- It should also allow the admin to define either the full or  
partial URL as part of the redirect (sometimes multiple domains may  
be directed).
	- Would be great to see a list of all referrers (in the log's  
history) as an option here too to make it easier to update the links
3) After a redirect link is defined it should be transparent to the  
visiter.  The use of the redirect should still be logged (as it is  
better to know that links should be updated on an external site).   
However, if a redirect hasn't been defined the user should be:
	- presented with a search page that is populated by strings parsed  
from the incorrect URL.
	- the choice that the users make should be logged and it would be  
really cool if there was an auto mode to set up a redirect link (if  
say 10 people all choose the same link).

A module like this would make it easy for admins to know which urls  
are the biggest problem and provide them tools to fix it.

Does something like this already exist?  Are people interested in  
adding this kind of functionality (would make migrations easier after  
all).  Are there things that should be on this 404 wish list that are  
missing?

I'm interested in hearing from folks though and then seeing if we  
can't get something developed to do it.

Mike
--
Mike Gifford, OpenConcept Consulting
Free Software for Social Change -> http://openconcept.ca
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