PICK A PAGE AND Home Site Guide Site Search Bulletin Board Virtual Greeting Cards -The Stuff You Want- Free CGI Script Archive Free Graphics Archive Free Coordinated Page Graphics -Getting Started on the Web- Clueless? For the Newbie! Domain Name Lookup Recommended Hosting Solutions Free Hosting -The Fun Tutorials- Lots of HTML Tricks and Tutorials HTML Tag Guide JavaScript Tricks and Tutorials Navigation Tricks Image Maps Tutorial -CGI, SSI and Unix Tutorials- SSI: Server Side Includes Forms Tutorial CGI Simple Tutorial Your First CGI Perl Script Banner Rotation Squawk: Recent News UNIX Guru Tutorial -Web Page Design Tutorials- Design Basics Most Important Part of your Page Photo Composition Tutorials MIDI Music on Your Pages All about COLOR THE SAFE Colors The Skinny on Fat Graphics Advanced Design Examples ASCII Chart -Managing Your Web Site- BNB on the APACHE Server Introduction to the Secure Server How to Promote Your Web Site Site Management Site Security Password Protection on Directories Site Diagnostics Script Troubleshooting -Resource Links- Offsite Resource Links Good Books The Tools You Need -All the Other Stuff- Newletter Back Issues Reader's Links Bird Droppings: Letters Kudos / Awards BNB FAQ Guestbook

Redirecting Your Reader to a CGI script when an error occurs. Redirecting your readers to a CGI script works exactly like sending them to an HTML page from their perspective, but it can be a timesaver for you as a webmaster. By calling a script, you have the opportunity to both handle the reader, and log the information. This can help you track down problems a lot faster than searching through your logs for errors. To redirect a reader to a CGI script when they encounter an error, you can either modify the srm.conf file if you have the ability to do so, or to modify your .htaccess file. In the srm.conf file you will find a line that looks like this: #ErrorDocument 404 /cgi-bin/missing_handler.pl To specify a special script, remove the # mark and and provide the name of your script. ErrorDocument 404 /cgi-bin/missing.cgi If you do not have access to the master system files, you can add the line as shown above to your .htaccess file. In order for this to work, the system administrator must make certain that the AllowOveride option called FileInfo is set. You should try to obtain AllowOveride All on your directories. You can of course have a specific script for each error code: ErrorDocument 400 /cgi-bin/badreq.cgi ErrorDocument 401 /cgi-bin/noauth.cgi ErrorDocument 403 /cgi-bin/forbid.cgi ErrorDocument 404 /cgi-bin/missing.cgi ErrorDocument 500 /cgi-bin/conferr.cgi Personally, I feel it a better idea to just have one script and pass the error code as the QUERY_STRING. ErrorDocument 400 /cgi-bin/birdtrap.cgi?400 ErrorDocument 401 /cgi-bin/birdtrap.cgi?401 ErrorDocument 403 /cgi-bin/birdtrap.cgi?403 ErrorDocument 404 /cgi-bin/birdtrap.cgi?404 ErrorDocument 500 /cgi-bin/birdtrap.cgi?500 Want to know how to write such a script? We just happen to have one for you, BIRDTRAP! Of course its free!

Find or Give Help on the BBS
Home Top E-Mail
If it looks great, it's by Christine

---