Counters

[Peter Murray]

--On Mon, Oct 6, 1997 12:29 PM -0700 "Roy Tennant"
<rtennant at library.berkeley.edu> wrote: 
> While you're at it, enter a bogus document address for your Web server. 
> If all you get is an error message like this:
> 
> 404 Not Found
> The requested URL /xxx was not found on this server. 
> 
> Then you have something else to speak with your Web manager about. They 
> can easily implement a more useful Web page instead of this very 
> unhelpful message. I suggest a page that offers a server-wide search 
> option, a list of links to the main sections of your site, and some 
> advice on other strategies to try (check for typos, chop the URL, etc.).


Some web servers (Netscape Enterprise Server and possible NCSA/Apache) let
you put a CGI script there instead of a static document.  With that CGI
you can provide helpful hints, direct the user to the information
maintainer's e-mail address (rather than the web master's e-mail address),
provide HTML->HTM translation, and even redesign your entire web server
structure by providing automatic redirects to new document locations (we
just completed one of those this fall).  Our version of such a script is
at:

  http://www.cwru.edu/dms/homes/pem/projects/nph-redirect.html

..although you'll have to take our some of our custom modifications to
make it work at your site.  Our work was based on RedMan, which can be
found at:

  http://sw.cse.bris.ac.uk/WebTools/redman.html


Peter
--
Peter Murray, Library Systems Manager                    pem at po.cwru.edu
Digital Media Services                 http://www.cwru.edu/home/pem.html
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio          W:216-368-5888