RFH's 404 pages with a 200 header?

[RFH Reseller: Rappie]

Should it retrun a code 200? I am not an expert on this matter. But if your having a page like this, saying "The Web site X cannot be found", shouldn't it come with a status code that says likewise?

[RFH Reseller: nick]

The page, as served by potassium, does exist, therefore a 200 header is appropriate. It is the page the redirect has come from that does not exist, and it is this redirect that gets a 307 header—for a temporary redirect.
The idea being that a search engine will see that this redirection is not permanent and will recheck it regularly. The page it then is redirected to with the error details will not be indexed because it contains the noindex meta tag.

Most hosts probably just have a non-existent website/subdomain leading to nothingness, giving no response at all.

Another option could be to have it display a standard 404 based on the parent domain's 404 error page, which we can customise, but it is sometimes useful to get the additional info the current details page shows, and Warren may have other reasons for just handling in the current manner.

[RFH Reseller: Rappie]

I see, its in the redirect. Thanks for the explaintion nick. I guess a 200 header should be fine then .

[RFH Reseller: askjim]

I do not agree that http 200 status is correct - http 200 status indicates that the page request has been sucessful.

The problem that actually exists is that you are requesting a page from a site that does not exist and by default a page is being returned.

I just checked work and I believe the correct code is 400 and the error returned by IIS 6 to the client if show friendly http errors off is Bad Request (Invalid Hostname)

The situation occurs when a FQDN resolves to a server where the site has not been configured in IIS.

10.4.1 400 Bad Request
The request could not be understood by the server due to malformed syntax. The client SHOULD NOT repeat the request without modifications.

[Staff: Warren Ashcroft]

I do not agree that http 200 status is correct - http 200 status indicates that the page request has been sucessful.

Which it has been, the redirect is made to a successful/valid page.

Its the status code of the redirect to the valid page (307 Temporary Redirect) which tells the search engines the current behavior isn't a permanent representation of the URL it is indexing.

[RFH Reseller: askjim]

Hi Warren,

Was just editing the post whilst you were posting.

BTW IE7 has a nice plugin called fiddler for sniffing http request / response if anyone wants to see what is happening.

I will message you an URL which returns a 400 error.

[Staff: Warren Ashcroft]

BTW IE7 has a nice plugin called fiddler for sniffing http request / response if anyone wants to see what is happening.

I know, I use Fiddler all the time.

I will message you an URL which returns a 400 error.

HTTP 400 is the status IIS returns when there is no matching website hosted at the server (and the Default Web Site with All Unassigned Bindings is disabled). Not sure what you are getting at mentioning this?