A short message to manufacturers and companies out there. We've seen this happen with lots of big names, including repeatedly, Bosch, Milestone, Hikvision.
When you create a web URL, like example.com/my-super-product, that web URL should always return a valid web page. Unfortunately, lots of companies break URLs when they discontinue products or change marketing, or worse, revamp their websites.
Here is an example that triggered this notice.
ONVIF used to have products categorized as 'Archived'. These were ONVIF 1.x products that were no longer current and were less likely to work but had previously been tested / submitted for conformance.
In the past year or so, ONVIF decided not to recognize any products as 'Archived'. That is fine and certainly reasonable.
The problem is if you go to the URL where ONVIF used to show the directory of Archived products, you get this:
Bad.
What ONVIF should have done is changed it to a short notice explaining the change they made. Instead, the visitor, unless they know this low level information, is confused as to what happened - did they make a mistake? Is the server down? etc.
So please, everyone keep your links working.
And, special notice to companies like Hikvision and Milestone who regularly change their website template, always use 301 redirects to ensure visitors can seamlessly move between old and new URLs.
Thanks.