# 410 Gone



## downtime (Oct 21, 2002)

I'm looking for the proper way of creating a 410 Gone for a site that is closing permanently. I've searched far and wide, all I'm looking for is a method to say to all comers that this site is gone, whatever you're looking for, it's gone and won't be back. I want to use .htaccess to do this. I've found many posts with advice, but they all produce this error,
The requested resource/
is no longer available on this server and there is no forwarding address. Please remove all references to this resource, (this is good)
but then add
Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Unless I put a file in the root with browser readable content and redirect to it, I can't seem avoid, 
Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
I do all I can to make the VPS and the sites on it to run the very latest requirements, to keep the server and the sites up to date with everything all the big players are calling for, and in tests I'm getting hitest scores, like from gtmetrix 97/95 scores, and I'm not finished tuning, but I can't determine if these are the results I should be getting for a complete 410. Can anyone weigh in on this?


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## JiminSA (Dec 15, 2011)

If you opted for 404 error instead, might this not alleviate the error 500's?


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## Noyb (May 25, 2005)

Downtime ..... Off the subject but do you want an Animated avatar ???


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## JiminSA (Dec 15, 2011)

Too Cute!!


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## downtime (Oct 21, 2002)

Ha, yes, thanks Noyb. I got rid of the 500 by simply putting this in htaccess. Redirect gone / and now I get this, which is much better as they do at least get the 410 permanently gone, without the 500.
Gone
The requested resource
/
is no longer available on this server and there is no forwarding address. Please remove all references to this resource.
Additionally, a 410 Gone error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

The point of needing a 410 is so that search engines will remove the site from their indexing, saving you bandwidth and saving them time. It shows that you're doing it all properly for both you and them. I see with sites on the shared hosting I also have that Google is still continuing to look for directories that were removed two years before. With the mobile device tide a properly configured server and having the sites working in concert with the server configuration has become a huge part of SEO. I never saw a mobile bot on the sites before I started tuning them for Google Page Speed and Yslow and making them mobile friendly, but now I see multiple mobile bots from Google and bingbot every day.
If I can get rid of the second 410 I'll post back how.
Thanks.


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## Noyb (May 25, 2005)




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## JiminSA (Dec 15, 2011)

Thanks Jay!!


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