Soft-404 Survival Kit — video

Video ID: 3L3mhFuspZI

Watch on YouTube · Companion kit: soft-404-kit.html

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What’s in the companion kit

• Detect soft-404 stubs by bytes + SHA-256 (not HTTP code alone)
• Use /-/raw/main/… raw mirrors to get stable bytes
• Publish receipts so others can verify your claim

Open: soft-404-kit.html

Outline (text)

This is an outline (not a verbatim transcript). It’s here to make the topic searchable and scannable.

• Problem: GitLab Pages can serve a “soft-404 mask” during propagation/caching.
• Symptom: the URL exists, but you get the same tiny stub body repeatedly (often ~3,725 bytes).
• Fix: use /-/raw/main/… links to fetch authoritative bytes from the repo.
• Verification: log http, bytes, and sha256(body) to fingerprint stubs.
• Sharing: publish a receipt (raw URL + hash) so others can verify even if Pages flaps.

Example commands

curl -sS -D h.txt -o b.html 'https://PROJECT.gitlab.io/path/file.html'
wc -c b.html
sha256sum b.html

Companion kit: soft-404-kit.html