[pmwiki-users] {$UrlPage}

[H. Fox]

On 10/20/05, Patrick R. Michaud <pmichaud at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 20, 2005 at 11:03:20AM -0700, H. Fox wrote:
> > On 10/19/05, Patrick R. Michaud <pmichaud at pobox.com> wrote:
> > > On Wed, Oct 19, 2005 at 09:58:09PM -0400, Waylan Limberg wrote:
> > > > Absolutely! Say a page is deleted. Someone follows a bookmark to that
> > > > now nonexistent page. The wiki just offers to create the page. It
> > > > should say the page was deleted (410) or moved to a new location (301)
> > > > or some other similar message.
> > >
> > > Unfortunately there's not a convenient way at the moment for PmWiki
> > > to find out that a page is "deleted", it only knows if the page
> > > exists or doesn't exist.  PmWiki would need to keep a list of
> > > previously existing pages somewhere.  (I suppose we could scan
> > > Site.AllRecentChanges or something like that, however.)
> > >
> > > Yes, we could possibly also scan wiki.d/ looking for the pagename with
> > > a ",del-" suffix, but I'm not a big fan of scanning the directory
> > > for this.
> >
> > Having it be automatic seems bit much.
> >
> > Maybe it would be sufficient to have a (:deleted:) directive, so an
> > author can signal to a bookmark-follower (or search engine bot) that
> > the page is gone for good.
>
> At some point it just becomes easier to configure it in the webserver,
> or as part of a configuration file, or even Site.DeletedPages  page.

I like the idea of using a page in the $SiteGroup.

Using a configuration file requires someone who can edit the text
file..  A page in the $SiteGroup can be maintained by anyone with
Admin privileges.

> We can do a (:deleted:) directive, or more generically a (:status 410:)
> directive,

(:status 410:) seems much better.

> but the problem is that it messes up things like search
> and page links, since PmWiki has to do more than just check for
> file existence -- it actually has to read the page file in every
> case to know if the page is active or deleted, and that can slow
> things down quite a bit.

Would having a Site.StatusCodes page (with a more appropriate name)
avoid that without adding too much other negative impact?

> > PmWiki already has a way of dealing with moved pages (redirecting to
> > the new location), right?  Could / should the 301 status code be
> > worked into that?
>
> PmWiki already uses a "302 Found" status code in the case of (:redirect:).
> I suppose it could be a "301 Moved Permanently" response, but I'm
> a little reluctant to assume that such urls are always, automatically,
> and irrevocably "permanently moved".

I didn't mean to suggest having the (:redirect:) directive assume urls
are always, automatically, and irrevocably "permanently moved".

I'm suggesting there should be a way to deliberately generate status
codes for certain pages.  It would be especially useful for CMS-type
installations.

Hagan