404 Console - Use Case - How to Improve Your Users 404 Experience

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Introduction

The CM 404 Console plugin allows you to monitor and fix 404 errors, manage redirects, suggestions and protect your WordPress from scanners. The plugin allows guiding users from error pages to active content.

Use Case Assumptions

In this example use case guide we will consider how to configure the plugin and create rules for redirecting, suggesting and banning when users visit not proper URL. Also we consider how to monitor the statistics of visited URLs and used IPs.

We consider that you have already bought the plugin, but not installed it yet. 

It follows:

• Installing the plugin
• Plugin settings
• Creating rules
  • Redirect dashboard
  • Suggestions dashboard
  • Auto-ban dashboard
• Activity logs
  • 404 URLs log
  • 404 IPs log
  • 404 volume graph
• End result

Installing the Plugin

The process is the same for all CM plugins and add-ons.

• Download the plugin from your customer dashboard
• Log in to WordPress and navigate to the WordPress Admin → Plugins settings
• Click on Add New
• Activate it and add the license

Learn more: Getting Started - Plugin Overview

Plugin Settings

Let's start with the plugin settings. Navigate to Admin Dashboard → CM 404 Console → Settings. 

There you can find one tab with a few options:

Feature Control

• Disable Redirect - Enable or disable the redirect rules. Note that disabling the rules does not delete them.
• Disable Suggestions - Enable or disable the suggestion rules. Note that disabling the rules does not delete them.

Suggestions Settings

• Suggestions label - Label for the section displaying the suggestions.

Banning Settings 

• Whitelisted IP - List IPs that should not get on the banned list (separate them with commas).
• Active Ban - Enable it to check all requests and block access from banned IPs.
• Banned Message - The message that will be displayed to banned users when they try to access the content.

Page to display 404 page

• Page to be displayed as 404 page - Choose the page that will be displayed as 404 page. You can either choose the default page that is placed at the top of the list or choose the page created by you.

  Have a note that if you choose the page that you've created, you need to place there a shortcode [cm-suggestions] to make suggestions rules work.

  Let's choose now the page that we've created in advance.

  

  The page that we've created in advance:

  

  
  

Don't forget to click the button  Save Changes after editing the settings.

Now, when the user tries to access the page which does not exist on your site, he will see the page that we've made:

Creating Rules

Now we can start creating rules. Navigate to  Admin Dashboard → CM 404 Console → Dashboards.

Here you can find 3 tabs with for each type of rule:

• Redirect Dashboard
• Suggestions Dashboard
• Auto-ban Dashboard

Each tab has a number in brackets - it shows the amount of created rules. As we haven't created any yet, it shows "0" for each.

Redirect Dashboard

With  Redirects, whenever a user reaches a certain page, he will be redirected to another, specified one.

Core settings are found within the tab Redirect Dashboard. It has the following options:

1. URL - Enter here the URL that you don't want users to visit.
2. URL Destination - Enter here the URL where the user will be redirected.
3. Delete - Click it to delete the rule.
4. Add Redirect - Click it to create a new rule.
5. Save Changes - Click it save created rules.
6. Cancel - Click it to remove all created rules before they were saved.

Let's create a few rules. For example, if some users make misprints when trying to access the "Contacts" page on our site, we can redirect them to the needed page:

Let's see, how it works on the front-end. When the user types the URL with a misprint that we added to the rule, he will be redirected to the correct page:

Suggestions Dashboard

With  Suggestions, a custom HTML segment will be added to any 404 URLs of your choice. Don't forget to place the shortcode [cm-suggestions] on the page that you create.

All settings are found within the tab Suggestions Dashboard. It has the following options:

1. URL - Enter here the URL that you don't want users to visit.
2. Suggestion - Enter here the content that you want the user to see instead. It can be regular text, links, any HTML.
3. Delete - Click it to delete the rule.
4. Add Suggestion URL - Click it to create a new rule.
5. Save Changes - Click it save created rules.
6. Cancel - Click it to remove all created rules before they were saved.

Let's create a rule. For example, if some users make misprint when trying to access the "Shop" page on our site, we can suggest them to follow to the correct page:

Let's see, how it works on the front-end. When the user types the URL with a misprint that we added to the rule, he will be suggested to visit the correct page:

Auto-ban Dashboard

With  Auto-ban, whenever a user reaches a certain URL, his IP will be banned.

All settings are found within the tab  Auto-ban Dashboard. The options are:

1. Auto-ban Url - Enter here the URL that you don't want users to visit and ban them for it.
2. Delete - Click it to delete the rule.
3. Add Banned URL - Click it to create a new rule.
4. Save Changes - Click it save created rules.
5. Cancel - Click it to remove all created rules before they were saved.

Let's create a rule: 

Let's see the result of accessing the page:

Activity Logs

The plugin has a few logs that allow you to monitor visited 404 URLs, used IPs and check the statistics in a volume graph. They also allow managing the queries. Let's consider them all one by one.

404 URLs Log

The URLs Log is a table showing all URLs that were accessed and generated a 404 error.

Navigate to  Admin Dashboard → CM 404 Console → 404 URLs log.

There you will find the table. Above the table you can find the following options:

1. Erase the log - Click this button to clear the log (full log - including 404 IPs Log and 404 volume graph).
2. Items per page - Define how many records to display per page in the table.
3. Start Date / End Date - Set the start and end dates, then click the button Apply to filter the results by the certain period of time.
4. URL - Enter the URL and click the button Apply to see the results for the specific URL.
5. Filters - Check needed boxes and click the button Apply to filter the results by definite parameter:
   1. Redirect
   2. Suggestion
   3. Reviewed
   4. Auto-banned

The table has a few columns:

1. 404 URL - Order the 404 queries by the URL.
2. IP - The number in brackets shows the amount of IPs that visited this 404 URL. Hovering on the blurb shows the list of IPs.
3. Referral URL - This column shows if there is a URL which the user linked from to the 404 URL.
4. Redirect URL - This column shows if there is a redirect rule defined for this URL.
5. Suggestion list - This column shows if there is a suggestion rule defined for this URL.
6. Autobanned - You can check this box to automatically create a rule in a Auto-ban Dashboard for this URL.
7. Reviewed - Check this box if you want to mark this URL as reviewed.
8. Count - Order the 404 queries by the amount visits.
9. Date - Shows the date of last attempt to visit this URL.

Hovering on any item in the table allows you to commit the following actions:

1. Define the redirect url - Click it to define the redirect rule for this URL right here. The rule will be automatically created in the Redirect Dashboard.
2. Define the suggestions list - Click it to define the suggestion rule for this URL right here. The rule will be automatically created in the Suggestions Dashboard.
3. Remove - Click it to delete this URL query from the table.
4. Ban all related IPs - Click it to ban all IPs that attempted to visit this URL.
5. Add to autoban list - Clicking on it will automatically create a ban rule for this URL in the Auto-ban Dashboard.
6. Filter all related IPs - Clicking on it will show the 404 IPs Log with all IPs that visited this URL.

404 IPs Log

The IPs log lists the IP addresses and tells which 404 pages they last accessed.

Navigate to  Admin Dashboard → CM 404 Console → 404 IPs Log.

There you will find the table. Above the table you can find the following options:

1. Export for .htaccess - Click it to Export the list of banned IPs. It will be generated as a .TXT file which can easily be added to the .htaccess file.
2. Items per page - Define how many records to display per page in the table.
3. Start Date / End Date - Set the start and end dates, then click the button Apply to filter the results by the certain period of time.
4. URL - Enter the URL and click the button Apply to see the list of IPs that visited it.
5. Filters - Check needed boxes and click the button Apply to filter the results by definite parameter:
   1. Reviewed
   2. Banned
   3. Only Banned

The table has a few columns:

1. IP - This column shows the IP.
2. 404 URL - The number in brackets shows the amount of visited 404 URLs. Hovering on the blurb shows the list of these URLs. You can order the results by the amount of URLs.
3. Referral URL - This column shows if there is a URL which the user user linked from to the 404 URL.
4. Banned - You can check this box to ban this IP on your site.
5. Reviewed - Check this box if you want to mark this URL as reviewed.
6. Count - The amount of times this IP visited 404 URLs. You can order the results by this parameter.
7. Date - Shows the date of last attempt to visit a 404 URL.

Hovering on any item in the table allows you to commit the following actions:

1. Check IP location - Click it to the check the IP location. It will refer you to the third-party site.

   

2. Remove - Click to delete all info about activities of this IP on your site from the log.

404 Volume Graph

The Volume Graph shows how many 404 were registered in the last 14 days.

Navigate to  Admin Dashboard → CM 404 Console → 404 volume graph.

In the table, you can filter the data by period of time - just set the Start Date and End Date, then click the button Apply. Hovering over any column shows the precise number of 404 cases per day.

End Result

Following instructions found in the plugin and guides you should be able to configure the plugin and create rules for redirecting, suggesting and banning when users visit not proper URL.

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