Hidden tag URLs return error when logged out, confusing users

troymccann

Hi everyone.

We're using hidden tags to create a private section of the forum. The problem is that when I send a URL to a discussion in that forum, if the user isn't already logged in it returns a blank page saying "The page you requested could not be found" and nothing more.

That's causing a lot of confusion! Is there a way to redirect people to log in instead? The message encourages people to give up and report that I've sent them a broken link. I think even redirecting to the home page with no error message would be better from a UX perspective.

What do you think?

clarkwinkelmann

troymccann there are multiple discussions about this on the forum already. It's tracked on GitHub here flarum/core654

I think the general consensus is that we do want to add the login link, but it depends on other issues that will refactor how the 404 page is rendered.

The only workaround in the meantime would be to customize the text shown on the 404 page. You could use Linguist to customized that text.

troymccann

Hi clarkwinkelmann. I'm looking into this again - if I use Linguist, can I inject some code in to add a link to log in?

Otherwise, I might need to finally bite the bullet and work out how to whip up a basic extension to do it. I've been getting a waterfall of feedback from most of our users believing that the server is broken because all of our emails return the faux-404 on most of the links. They're not learning that they need to log in first, and often believe they already are. 😅

troymccann

Hmm I tried doing a search, and was surprised when I couldn't see any previous discussion!

I'll check out Linguist. Thanks.

clarkwinkelmann

troymccann while simple HTML might be possible with Linguist, I don't think you will be able to make a link to the login page.

Customizing the error page further will indeed require an extension.