Help your visitors with Dynamic404
Sunday, 28 March 2010Without you knowing it, your Joomla site might generate numerous 404-errors: Pages have been moved or removed, you may have switched from component to another, or upgraded from Joomla! 1.0 to Joomla! 1.5. Because the URLs changed, your visitors might get 404-errors when visiting obsolete pages from Google Search. Dynamic404 helps these visitors back on track.
From Joomla! 1.0 URLs to Joomla! 1.5 URLs
When you have moved from Joomla! 1.0 to Joomla! 1.5 the URL scheme changed, but your content did not. This means that the full URL is different, but the URL-part indicating the article (using the articles alias) is not. Dynamic404 is able to catch the 404, and automatically redirect from the old Joomla! 1.0 to the new Joomla! 1.5 URL. This works out of the box, and you don't have to configure anything.
Automatic or manual?
The same trick is applied by Dynamic404 when it comes to other Joomla! content: Dynamic404 is able to search the database for the best possible match when the old URL gives a 404 page. You can also add your own custom rules to it, which (in general) override the automatic redirects: For instance, if Dynamic404 finds a match based on the article-alias, but this match is less perfect, you can add your own static redirect-rule which redirects the user to a new article instead.
Manage the 404s
404 errors are logged to the Dynamic404 database table, which means you can both review older 404-pages and add new redirect-rules accordingly. Within the overview of log-entries you can select one log-entry (containing a 404-error) and automatically create a new redirect-rule based on this log-entry. This makes managing 404s very efficient.
Plugins
But there is much much more. We have deciced to create not only a tool that just works, but also allow it to be extended through Joomla! plugins. Plugins can be placed in the group dynamic404 and their own logic to Dynamic404. Dynamic404 searches the Joomla! database for possible matches, but it does so by looking within the components it knows.
For instance, if you are using VirtueMart of K2, Dynamic404 is not aware of these components: For this, an extra plugin could be written which adds new possible matches to the list of Dynamic404. More plugins for Dynamic404 will be offered as separate downloads on our Yireo site.
