Ideas

dare.co.uk 404 redirects report — 2026-05-15

Daily top-50 404 paths from Cloudflare Analytics, last 24h. Operationalises feedback_404_redirect_threshold_rule — at ≥50 hits/day, examine and decide whether to redirect editorial 404s to a deserving archive page.

TL;DR

Legacy editorial — decide redirect target

(28 path(s) · 277 total hits)

Path Hits Action Decision?
/ip 23 examine + decide (rule applies)
/config.json 12 examine + decide (rule applies)
/blog/ 11 examine + decide (rule applies)
//cms/wp-includes/wlwmanifest.xml 11 examine + decide (rule applies)
/swagger.json 11 examine + decide (rule applies)
/.vscode/sftp.json 10 examine + decide (rule applies)
/server-status 10 examine + decide (rule applies)
/_profiler/info 10 examine + decide (rule applies)
/server 9 examine + decide (rule applies)
/actuator/env 9 examine + decide (rule applies)
/swagger-ui.html 9 examine + decide (rule applies)
/v3/api-docs 9 examine + decide (rule applies)
/swagger/v1/swagger.json 9 examine + decide (rule applies)
/___proxy_subdomain_cpanel 9 examine + decide (rule applies)
/trace.axd 9 examine + decide (rule applies)
/v2/_catalog 9 examine + decide (rule applies)
/ecp/Current/exporttool/microsoft.exchange.ediscovery.exporttool.application 9 examine + decide (rule applies)
/v2/api-docs 9 examine + decide (rule applies)
/api/swagger.json 9 examine + decide (rule applies)
/swagger/swagger-ui.html 9 examine + decide (rule applies)
/telescope/requests 9 examine + decide (rule applies)
/api-docs/swagger.json 9 examine + decide (rule applies)
/debug/default/view 9 examine + decide (rule applies)
/___proxy_subdomain_whm/login 9 examine + decide (rule applies)
/webjars/swagger-ui/index.html 9 examine + decide (rule applies)
/console/ 9 examine + decide (rule applies)
/swagger/index.html 9 examine + decide (rule applies)
/settings.py 8 examine + decide (rule applies)

Favicon paths

(2 path(s) · 18 total hits)

Path Hits Action Decision?
/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png 9 already redirected — verify deploy lag
/favicon.ico 9 already redirected — verify deploy lag

Root — should never 404

(1 path(s) · 13 total hits)

Path Hits Action Decision?
/ 13 investigate — should never 404

Bot-probe paths — leave 404

(19 path(s) · 213 total hits)

Path Hits Action Decision?
/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/wp-spamfree/img/wpsf-img.php 31 leave 404 (security signal)
/wp-blog.php 23 leave 404 (security signal)
/chosen.php 12 leave 404 (security signal)
/simple.php 11 leave 404 (security signal)
/about.php 11 leave 404 (security signal)
/11.php 10 leave 404 (security signal)
/wp-content/uploads/index.php 10 leave 404 (security signal)
/wp-content/uploads/ 10 leave 404 (security signal)
/av.php 10 leave 404 (security signal)
/error_log.php 10 leave 404 (security signal)
/bolt.php 9 leave 404 (security signal)
/file.php 9 leave 404 (security signal)
/i.php 9 leave 404 (security signal)
/666.php 8 leave 404 (security signal)
/wp-content/plugins/cookie-law-info/public/images/logo-cookieyes.svg 8 leave 404 (security signal)
/buy.php 8 leave 404 (security signal)
/aaa.php 8 leave 404 (security signal)
/adminfuns.php 8 leave 404 (security signal)
/wp.php 8 leave 404 (security signal)

How to apply the decisions

For each row with DECIDE:

  1. Inspect the path — is it a real legacy URL (old article slug, external referrer link) or accidentally-popular bot noise?
  2. If editorial: pick a deserving target from the existing archive-page roots: - /methods-of-business-design/ - /culture-means-thriving-teams/ - /fields-notes-from-business-design/ - /cinema/ - /photography/ - /observations/
  3. Add a 301 to ~/Code/dare-co-uk/_redirects: /<path> /<target> 301
  4. Commit + push; Cloudflare Pages redeploys in ~30s.

Bot-probe paths stay 404 — redirecting them rewards scanners. Section roots get index-page builds, not redirects, because the underlying content is stunning and deserves its own home.


Generated 2026-05-15 via dare_404_redirects_report.py. Companion to feedback_404_redirect_threshold_rule.


Automated recommendation — maturity ladder

Site housekeeping wants to become a scheduled script + intelligence engine. Criteria are set in the rule (feedback_404_redirect_threshold_rule); this report applies them. Maturity ladder for how the recommendations become action:

Today (v1 — ad-hoc) Tomorrow (v2 — programmatic + HITL) Future (v3 — decision engine)
Report generates daily, surfaces threshold hits Report adds confidence score + suggested target per row, opens weekly PR with proposed _redirects edits Engine auto-applies high-confidence redirects, queues medium-confidence for weekly batch review, escalates ambiguous
Dan reviews report manually when alerted Weekly cadence: 15 min review, approve/reject queued changes Quarterly: review engine’s calibration + edit criteria
_redirects edited by hand on a case-by-case basis _redirects PRs auto-drafted from approved rows _redirects PRs auto-merged for high-confidence; manual override always available

Criteria the report already delineates (the substrate v2/v3 build on):

v2 adds: a confidence score per editorial row (based on path-shape regex + historical hit pattern + the article corpus’ nearest-neighbour match for a sensible target), and a draft PR against _redirects per weekly cohort. v3 lets the engine merge the high-confidence cohort autonomously, with Dan reviewing the medium/low cohorts.

Each level inherits the same criteria — only the level of automation changes. The rule stays the source of truth; the engine becomes a faster applicator of it.

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