New Message: Redirect From Deleted Manila Website?

[webmaster at userland.com]

A new message was posted:

Address: http://frontier.userland.com/discuss/msgReader$14613

By: ken tompkins (ken at loki.stockton.edu)

We are in the process of deleting old, unused websites. I have deleted 600 from the 1400 we had and am only about half done.

Most of what I have deleted have been student sites that haven't been touched in a couple of years. Wouldn't you know, of course, that someone tried to access one of these sites, found it gone with the strange message from Manila, and has now complained to the administration.

We are certainly going to get a few more of these.

Is there a way to create a text that will explain that the site is no longer available, blah, blah, blah? It would be ideal to create a text, give it an address (say make it the front page of a Manila site) and imbed that URL in the db. Then when a "can't find the page" error occurs, this other site would be display via a kind of redirect.

Suggestions for how to handle this?

ken tompkins
richard stockton college of nj

This is a Manila site... http://manila.userland.com/.