I want to introduce a functionality in my ASP.net website that, whenever a request is received for an unknown URL on my domain, the user is redirected to my error_404.
You can point your users to a custom 404 by including the customErrors
section in your web.config.
<customErrors mode="On" defaultRedirect="~/errors/GeneralError.aspx">
<error statusCode="404" redirect="~/errors/PageNotFound.aspx" />
</customErrors>
As others have stated in the comments above, sending users back to your homepage is going to be not only annoying but functionally confusing.
My advice would be to send the user to a page that gives them some information about what's happened and offers them a next step (browse other products, go back to your dashboard etc).
It's works for me. I just include this code between the tag <system.webServer>
:
<httpErrors errorMode="Custom">
<remove statusCode="404"/>
<error statusCode="404" path="~/Erro/PaginaNaoEncontrada.aspx" responseMode="Redirect"/>
</httpErrors>
In my case changing "ResponseRewrite" to "ResponseRedirect" worked:
My MVC Webconfig file Configuration:
<system.web>
<compilation targetFramework="4.0" />
<customErrors mode="On" redirectMode="ResponseRedirect">
<error statusCode="404" redirect="~/Home/Login" />
</customErrors>
</system.web>
</configuration>
This is how you configure a custom 404 error page for both ASP.NET and non-ASP.NET requests:
<configuration>
<system.web>
<compilation targetFramework="4.0" />
<customErrors mode="On" redirectMode="ResponseRewrite">
<error statusCode="404" redirect="http404.aspx" />
</customErrors>
</system.web>
<system.webServer>
<httpErrors errorMode="Custom">
<remove statusCode="404"/>
<error statusCode="404" path="/http404.aspx" responseMode="ExecuteURL"/>
</httpErrors>
</system.webServer>
</configuration>
As others already pointed out, you should not use an HTTP redirection to send the user to the home page, this is not only confusing to users but also to machines (e.g. search engines). It is important to use the 404 status code and not a 3xx code.
You can achieve the desired functionality using meta refresh on HTML:
<%@ Page Language="C#" %>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>Not Found</title>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5;url=/"/>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Not Found</h1>
<p>Redirecting to Home...</p>
</body>
</html>