404 Not Found
- Jeff Hegeman
In the previous version of the URL shortener if you visited a link that could not be found, you would be sent to the wisconsin.edu homepage.
It was found it to be a poor user experience to be redirected to a page that you weren’t expecting without notification as to why. Theming this site was avoided, as it is not meant to be a destination.
The solution chosen is to show an un-themed 404 page that notifies the user that the link was not found; they may try again, or wait to be redirected.
The redirect location is set in the config file as the constant REDIRECT_LOCATION. It is also set to google.com in the theme just in case it is missing from the config file. It was set to google.com not wisconsin.edu in the theme in case the theme is used for other projects that wouldn’t want redirection to wisconsin.edu.