On 3/28/07, Tom Molesworth <tetra604@gmail.com> wrote: > > I'd vote for 403 Forbidden. > > The 300 series is to indicate a change although the content is valid. > 400-series errors generally indicate that the returned content is not > what you were after in the first place. > > Most proxy servers will return 403 if the user is not authenticated. > This is essentially the case here since permissions have been > suspended. The 403 error is often taken by clients to say that there > is a real problem that should be reported, rather than 302 etc. which > would mean that the service itself has changed but probably still > valid. > I agree. From a search engine optimization standpoint, if you feed the search engine a 302, it will start indexing the suspended page, replacing the original content (causing you to lose your rankings). Whereas if you send it a 4xx error, it will keep the last found page in it's cache, and check back periodically to see if normal has been restored yet. Granted SEO might not be your intention, however the SEO standards side of it does further support Tom's vote. Good luck! -- -Harry Maugans http://www.harrymaugans.com
Received on Wednesday, 28 March 2007 17:55:35 UTC