[wp-hackers] Correct 404 Behavior?

[Jeremy Visser]

Computer Guru wrote:
> Anyway, you'd have to check if that permalink *used* to exist and if
> it does but isn't there now send a 410.

This is one belief I have had for a _long_ time, but never bothered to
say anything about it. I think that WordPress should retain a list of
past permalinks and return 410s for pages that are gone.

Also, I dislike the idea of a file-based web server. e.g. you request
/fruit/apple.html, which points to the server's DocumentRoot +
/fruit/apple.html. I wish web servers worked with a database for the
URLs (e.g. you could create an entry for /fruit/apple, then point it to
/home/jeremy/docs/apple.html), which would be more apt for handling
410s. I'm not aware of any web servers which behave like that -- the
closest thing I can think of is using a PHP script to do the job, and
using mod_rewrite to point all URLs to the script.