It’s great to see how websites are getting faster, more reliable and easier to use with the help of new Drupal technologies, as we have described in our posts. For instance, we’ve discussed how well web accessibility standards are observed in Drupal 8, how the Inline Entity Form module makes it easier to create product groups and other entities, and how the BigPipe module lets web pages load faster. Perfection! No place for an error. Or, if there is one, the Fast 404 Drupal 8 module will come to the rescue. That’s what our topic is for today.
404 errors: more details you should know
Sometimes 404 errors are hard to avoid, especially during the launch of a new website or in other cases when the paths to certain web pages change.
But even errors can be made elegantly! For example, we once offered you a collection of 404 errors with a beautiful and creative design. These are nice enough to make your website’s visitors forgive you for them ;)
However, your website’s guests are not the only ones who suffer from 404 errors. You also “owe an apology” to your website and your server. See why.
404 errors take up too much server memory resources (even hundreds of megabytes), which can significantly slow a website down. Multiple 404s can even cause a website to a crash.
“A 404 request is expensive in terms of memory because content is being requested time and time again from the server, but it has either been removed, moved to another URL without proper forwarding, or an incorrect URL has been typed in”, says Neetu Morwani, the Drupal developer who upgraded the useful module solving this problem.
The Fast 404 Drupal 8 module: what it does
This module is a great way out of the situation because it loads a simple 404 page which doesn’t use much memory at all. It offers flexible configuration options.
Without the Fast 404 Module, Drupal literally works too hard processing 404 requests and loading all assets that might be associated with it (CSS, JS, images). The Fast 404 module makes life easier for Drupal because it doesn’t make it work. It delivers the page in a blink of an eye without loading unnecessary assets like JS, CSS, JS, etc.
Who created the Fast 404 module
This module was created back in 2011 by Michael Cooper. The process of porting it to Drupal 8 was started in April 2016 by Neetu Morvani from Acquia, because the company realized the great importance of this module for improving user experience.
Make your site better with this and many other awesome modules! If you need some modules built specially for your website, or assistance in your site’s optimization, feel free to contact our website development services company.
And if you are interested in reading more advanced technical articles on Drupal 8 and more that contain code examples and other details, welcome to visit the development category of our blog.