Custom '404 Page not found' DSAPI Filter Installation

Pre-requisites

This filter is designed for the Win32 platform only.
This filter is designed to work with versions of Lotus Domino from 6.0 onwards.

Before Installation

Download the .zip file and unpack the contents. The files included are

dsapi404.dll - the Domino filter
dsapi404.ini - the configuration file
install.txt - the installation file
legal.txt - the licensing information

Please read the legal.txt file before installing the DLL. Tron Systems do not accept any liability and do not provide free support for this product.

Installation

The dsapi404.dll and dsapi404.ini files should be placed in the Lotus Domino program directory (the same directory as the nserver.exe file). The ini file contains one entry (redir_url). Change this entry to the page that should be shown if the requested page is unavailable e.g.

redir_url=/homepage.nsf

The redirection can be specified as an absolute (e.g. http://www.yourhost.com/404.html) or relative address (e.g. /404.html).

Open the Domino Administrator.

If the "Load Internet configurations from Server\Internet Sites documents:" is set to disabled, go to the "Internet Protocols" tab and choose the "HTTP" tab. Scroll to the DSAPI section and enter "dsapi404" in the "DSAPI filter file names" field.
If the "Load Internet configurations from Server\Internet Sites documents:" is set to enabled, close the server document and from within the "Web" section edit the website documents for the virtual servers that you wish to configure the custom 404 messages for. Choose the "Configuration" tab and enter "dsapi404" in the "DSAPI filter file names" field.

With either of these options, please note that the order in which the filters are listed is important to their function and you may need to consider this when adding the filter. Once all of the above settings have been completed you will need to stop and start the HTTP service using "tell http quit" and "load http" (do not use "tell http restart").

Other Information

It is possible to have different custom 404 pages for each virtual server. Ensure that the ini file specifies a relative address (i.e. it does not start http://...). Create a form in a Domino database that has an editable field called Server_Name. Hide the field and create a computed subform based on the server name. You can then create as many subforms as you wish to appear when different virtual servers are accessed.

Please be aware that weblogs will no longer report 404 errors. The weblogs will, however, count the number of times that the page specified in the ini file has been shown.