Why use 404.html instead of index.html

[DIYgod]

I try rename 404.html to index.html, it works well, see: http://dplayer.js.org/docs/

Using 404 has two defect:

• Can't put docs to second-level directory
• Not SEO friendly

[QingWei-Li]

Of course, It's works. If it is a multi level directory, it will not work. Such as /first/second, the first/second.html is not exist.

If the server can't find the file, it will fallback to 404.html

[DIYgod]

So, why not use index.html....

[QingWei-Li]

GitHub Pages not support history api fallback. But the url can not be found, the 404.html will be rendered. This first/second.html actually does not exist, but it can be rendered dynamically if it fallback to 404.html. Sorry for my bad english. 😅

[DIYgod]

还是用中文吧...

我知道用 404.html 是可行的，但为什么不用 index.html，想问下这样做的原因是什么？

比如我有个项目DPlayer，dplayer.js.org 一级目录用来做demo页了，然后想在 dplayer.js.org/docs 二级目录做文档页面，如果是 404.html 就无法实现了，只改成 index.html

[MCBBC]

HI ! Man DIYgod is FuTa

[QingWei-Li]

index.html 可行，如果你只有一个文档的话。但是多个文档文件就没办法了，比如说我有这样的结构

-| README.md
-| zh-cn.md

其中 README.md 是主页面，我可以直接通过 domain.com 访问。但是要访问 domain.com/zh-cn 就会找不到文件，因为并不存在一个叫 zh-cn.html 的文件，所以就会 fallback 到 404.html。我只是利用了可自定义 404 的特性实现了 "SPA" 的效果

[DIYgod]

奇巧淫技，学到了！

[QingWei-Li]

至于你说的 SEO，因为内容是动态生成的，似乎没办法做到 😅

[DIYgod]

只是感觉一直返回的是404不太友好... 但这样的好处也很明显...

[QingWei-Li]

好的 我会在文档里提一下，如果只是单页文档就直接用 index.html

[egoist]

Since it's always SEO-unfriendly, I think hash routing is fine for both cases (multi-pages and using index.html), maybe add an option for using hash routing?

[haltcase]

I don't really understand what kind of workflow is supposed to come out of this. If I call my file 404.html, GitHub uses README.md as the index. If I call it index.html, docsify serve docs fails saying there's no 404.html - so I can't even use the dev server. Am I not understanding something here?

[QingWei-Li]

@citycide docsify-cli bug, fixed in 1.1.0, please upgrade docsify-cli. 😁

[egoist]

@citycide by the way, you can use .nojekyll to prevent from serving README.md as index

[haltcase]

@QingWei-Li nicely done, I'm glad I wasn't doing anything glaringly wrong! @egoist thanks for that tip also.