[PHP] 404 redirects "stolen" by provider

[Merlin Morgenstern]

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,

Merlin

--
PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php

Re: [PHP] 404 redirects "stolen" by provider

[Ashley Sheridan]

On Fri, 2010-04-09 at 21:29 +0200, 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,
> 
> Merlin
> 


It looks like the ISP is looking at the header response codes and
capturing the 404 ones. I've seen other ISP's do this and return a
search results page of their own sponsored content.

I think the best way round this is to use the .htaccess redirect rules
instead to deliver the correct content:

RewriteRule ^(.+) /users.php?username=$1

Of course that's only a simple example, and you might need to tweak it a
bit.

This way, no extra header codes are sent to the user, and can't be
captured by anyones ISP.

Thanks,
Ash
http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk

Re: [PHP] 404 redirects "stolen" by provider

[Andrew Ballard]

On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 3:29 PM, 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,
>
> Merlin
>
> --
> PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
> To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
>
>

Is there anything in the request headers from these users that the
server could use to identify that they came from this provider? If so,
you could serve the 404 response with a 200 header. Effectively,
instead of having the server reply "No such page" to those request, it
is saying "Yes, there is no such page." It's a bit broken, IMO, but
you used to have to do something similar for WebTV. Their browser
would simply show a 404 dialog instead of the custom error page.

If you are feeling particularly spiteful toward "unitymedia," you
could even take the opportunity to add a message to your not-found
page for those people recommending a different provider that doesn't
hijack requests for missing content to another site.  :-)

Andrew

-- 
PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php

Re: [PHP] 404 redirects "stolen" by provider

[Merlin Morgenstern]

Am 09.04.2010 21:53, schrieb Ashley Sheridan:

On Fri, 2010-04-09 at 21:29 +0200, 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,

Merlin

 


It looks like the ISP is looking at the header response codes and 
capturing the 404 ones. I've seen other ISP's do this and return a 
search results page of their own sponsored content.


I think the best way round this is to use the .htaccess redirect rules 
instead to deliver the correct content:

RewriteRule ^(.+) /users.php?username=$1

Of course that's only a simple example, and you might need to tweak it 
a bit.


This way, no extra header codes are sent to the user, and can't be 
captured by anyones ISP.


Thanks,
Ash
http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk




This sounds like the best solution to me. The only problem is that my 
regex knowledge is pretty limited. The command:

RewriteRule ^(.+) /subapp_members/search_user.php

leads to an internal server error, the syntax seams ok?! Could you help 
with the correct rewrite rule?


The script search_user.php gets the user name and looks it up in the db:
$parameter = explode('/', $_SERVER[REQUEST_URI]);
$user_name = addslashes($parameter[1]);

So I would need to redirect all potential 404s to that script. How could 
that rewriterule look like?

Re: [PHP] 404 redirects "stolen" by provider

[Peter Lind]

On 9 April 2010 22:20, Merlin Morgenstern  wrote:
> This sounds like the best solution to me. The only problem is that my regex
> knowledge is pretty limited. The command:
> RewriteRule ^(.+) /subapp_members/search_user.php
>

The above rule will try to redirect everything to
/subapp_members/search_user.php. If you're looking to allow
example.com/username, then use something like:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /subapp_members/search_user.php?member=$1 [L]

This is likely to not do what you want from it, but it's the closest I
can guess as to what you want.

Have a read of http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html

-- 

WWW: http://plphp.dk / http://plind.dk
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/plind
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fake51
BeWelcome: Fake51
Couchsurfing: Fake51


-- 
PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php

Re: [PHP] 404 redirects "stolen" by provider

[Merlin Morgenstern]

Am 09.04.2010 22:58, schrieb Peter Lind:

On 9 April 2010 22:20, Merlin Morgenstern  wrote:
   

This sounds like the best solution to me. The only problem is that my regex
knowledge is pretty limited. The command:
RewriteRule ^(.+) /subapp_members/search_user.php

 

The above rule will try to redirect everything to
/subapp_members/search_user.php. If you're looking to allow
example.com/username, then use something like:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /subapp_members/search_user.php?member=$1 [L]

This is likely to not do what you want from it, but it's the closest I
can guess as to what you want.

Have a read of http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html

   



This will not work, as I do have a bunch of other redirects inside the 
page.


What might work is a rule, that redirects urls that do not have a full 
stop or slash inside. Is this possible? My regex knowledge is 
unfortunatelly pretty limited.


--
PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php

Re: [PHP] 404 redirects "stolen" by provider

[Peter Lind]

On 9 April 2010 23:08, Merlin Morgenstern  wrote:
>
> Am 09.04.2010 22:58, schrieb Peter Lind:
>>
>> On 9 April 2010 22:20, Merlin Morgenstern  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> This sounds like the best solution to me. The only problem is that my
>>> regex
>>> knowledge is pretty limited. The command:
>>> RewriteRule ^(.+) /subapp_members/search_user.php
>>>
>>>
>>
>> The above rule will try to redirect everything to
>> /subapp_members/search_user.php. If you're looking to allow
>> example.com/username, then use something like:
>>
>> RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
>> RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
>> RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /subapp_members/search_user.php?member=$1 [L]
>>
>> This is likely to not do what you want from it, but it's the closest I
>> can guess as to what you want.
>>
>> Have a read of http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html
>>
>>
>
>
> This will not work, as I do have a bunch of other redirects inside the page.
>
> What might work is a rule, that redirects urls that do not have a full stop
> or slash inside. Is this possible? My regex knowledge is unfortunatelly
> pretty limited.
>

Try:

RewriteRule ^([^./]+)$ /yourfile.php?variable=$1 [L]

Apart from that, rewrite rules work in order. If a rule above this
triggers and has the L flag, those below won't get processed.

-- 

WWW: http://plphp.dk / http://plind.dk
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/plind
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fake51
BeWelcome: Fake51
Couchsurfing: Fake51


--
PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php

Re: [PHP] 404 redirects "stolen" by provider

[kranthi]

header('HTTP/1.1 200 Ok');
in /subapp_members/search_user.php will do the job

-- 
PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php

Re: [PHP] 404 redirects "stolen" by provider

[Merlin Morgenstern]

Am 09.04.2010 23:15, schrieb Peter Lind:

On 9 April 2010 23:08, Merlin Morgenstern  wrote:
   

Am 09.04.2010 22:58, schrieb Peter Lind:
 

On 9 April 2010 22:20, Merlin Morgensternwrote:

   

This sounds like the best solution to me. The only problem is that my
regex
knowledge is pretty limited. The command:
RewriteRule ^(.+) /subapp_members/search_user.php


 

The above rule will try to redirect everything to
/subapp_members/search_user.php. If you're looking to allow
example.com/username, then use something like:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /subapp_members/search_user.php?member=$1 [L]

This is likely to not do what you want from it, but it's the closest I
can guess as to what you want.

Have a read of http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html


   


This will not work, as I do have a bunch of other redirects inside the page.

What might work is a rule, that redirects urls that do not have a full stop
or slash inside. Is this possible? My regex knowledge is unfortunatelly
pretty limited.

 

Try:

RewriteRule ^([^./]+)$ /yourfile.php?variable=$1 [L]

Apart from that, rewrite rules work in order. If a rule above this
triggers and has the L flag, those below won't get processed.

   


Hello Peter,

thank you for the rewrite rule. This workes perfectly!! The other ideas 
like sending 200 afterwards did not work as 404 has already been sent.


Thank you for you help!

Merlin

--
PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php