I will address the custom 404-page first, since it is the easiest of the two.

404 Pages

It is not a good idea to have just a single custom 404 page for everything, and let the customer decide what to do next, which can lead to confusion. It is better to have multiple customize 404 pages that can address specific groups or categories.

Here's an example of our main 404 page.
https://www.myradiomall.com/page-not-found

Here's what a specific 404 custom page looks like.
https://www.myradiomall....ion-page-vertex-standard

These redirects are driven by specific rules

Redirecting pages

First, let me start by saying we have found that the dynamic and static redirect option in Ablecommerce is great for internal to internal redirects, but not so good from external to internal redirects.

To redirect pages there are 4 options:

1 - Make the changes as they appear on search console - not the best idea
2 - Create rules in IIS - not too crazy about resources being used for this
3 - Use a CDN - for us the best option
4 - Do nothing - you're going to get screwed by Google

We dislike redirects being done at the server level, we preferred the redirects to be done before a user hits our site. This is why we use Cloudflare PageRules, you can sign up for the $20 a month program, and buy more rules as needed.

You can use batch and wildcards, which is why we like using a CDN, but you can do the same thing in IIS. This particular rule removes the "HTML" extension and redirects to the same url without any extension.

"https://www.myradiomall.com/motorola*.html" -> "https://www.myradiomall.com/motorola$1"

We like the fact that we can create batches to handle hundreds of URLs, and those that are not included in the batches are handled on a one-to-one basis.

Example of a one-to-one
"https://blog.myradiomall.com" -> "https://www.myradiomall.com/blogs"

All of the above redirects are permanent 301

This was a big thing for us, and we started getting ready months before we permanently closed our old site and launched it in AbleCommerce.

Take what I'm about to tell you extremely serious, at the very least, you should be logging into Google search console and start fixing changes there, if you do not, and Google notices that you're not making a timely effort to fix the disconnects, they will drop you.

Doing this on the search console should be a last resort, and I would strongly recommend you go with an outside service or a CDN to get this done.

I hope this helps,
-Ray

Edited by user Saturday, February 19, 2022 6:32:38 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

To create a custom 404 page in ablecommerce you can override a default 404 view file.

1- Copy the following files from Website\Views\Errors

- \_Layout.cshtml
- \_ViewStart.cshtml
- \PageNotFound.cshtml - Edit this file with your custom message

2- Paste these files to \Website\Themes\{current Theme}\Views\Errors\
(Create the views/errors folder on current theme root)

3- Copy the following files from \Website\Views

- \_ViewStart.cshtml
- \web.config

4- Paste to \Website\Themes\{current Theme}\Views\