Reader: incorrect header response codes for links missing a protocol such as http://

[designsimply]

Steps to reproduce:

1. Publish a new post with a bad link, i.e. just "www.example.com" with no protocol included
2. Follow the blog and find the post in the Reader main stream
3. Click on the link
4. Check the response header for a call to the bad link
5. Repeat the last two steps for the blog stream, list stream, tag stream, and single-post view

Sample bad link:

<a href="www.example.com">Example</a>

Result: the link in the main stream correctly returns a 404 response, but the response returned from other pages such as blog stream, list stream, tag stream, and single-post view do not return a 404 for bad links. Also, the error pages in the browser are inconsistent each with a different layout and/or a different Drake.

Here are screenshots and the respective response headers:

From the Reader main stream:

^{Seen at https://wordpress.com/www.example.com using Chrome 43.0.2357.132 on Mac OS X 10.10.4 logged in as designsimply (superadmin) proxied.}

↪ curl -I https://wordpress.com/www.example.com
HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
Server: nginx
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2015 01:35:56 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Connection: keep-alive
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Vary: Cookie
X-hacker: If you're reading this, you should visit automattic.com/jobs and apply to join the fun, mention this header.
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
X-Pingback: https://wordpress.com/xmlrpc.php
Expires: Wed, 11 Jan 1984 05:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate, max-age=60
Pragma: no-cache
X-ac: 1.ord _dca

From the blog feed:

^{Seen at https://wordpress.com/read/blog/feed/www.example.com using Chrome 43.0.2357.132 on Mac OS X 10.10.4}

↪ curl -I https://wordpress.com/read/blog/feed/www.example.com
HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Server: nginx
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2015 01:36:19 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Connection: keep-alive
Vary: Cookie
X-hacker: If you're reading this, you should visit automattic.com/jobs and apply to join the fun, mention this header.
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
Expires: Wed, 11 Jan 1984 05:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate, max-age=0
Pragma: no-cache
Location: https://wordpress.com/wp-login.php?redirect_to=https%3A%2F%2Fwordpress.com%2Fread%2Fblog%2Ffeed%2Fwww.example.com&reauth=1
X-ac: 1.ord _dca

From the list stream:

^{Seen at https://wordpress.com/read/list/designsimply/www.example.com using Chrome 43.0.2357.132 on Mac OS X 10.10.4}

↪ curl -I https://wordpress.com/read/list/designsimply/www.example.com
HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Server: nginx
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2015 01:36:38 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Connection: keep-alive
Vary: Cookie
X-hacker: If you're reading this, you should visit automattic.com/jobs and apply to join the fun, mention this header.
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
Expires: Wed, 11 Jan 1984 05:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate, max-age=0
Pragma: no-cache
Location: https://wordpress.com/wp-login.php?redirect_to=https%3A%2F%2Fwordpress.com%2Fread%2Flist%2Fdesignsimply%2Fwww.example.com&reauth=1
X-ac: 1.ord _dca

From the tag stream:

^{Seen at https://wordpress.com/tag/www.example.com using Chrome 43.0.2357.132 on Mac OS X 10.10.4}

↪ curl -I https://wordpress.com/tag/www.example.com
HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Server: nginx
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2015 01:36:50 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Connection: keep-alive
Vary: Cookie
X-hacker: If you're reading this, you should visit automattic.com/jobs and apply to join the fun, mention this header.
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
Expires: Wed, 11 Jan 1984 05:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate, max-age=0
Pragma: no-cache
Location: https://wordpress.com/wp-login.php?redirect_to=https%3A%2F%2Fwordpress.com%2Fread%2Flist%2Fdesignsimply%2Fwww.example.com&reauth=1
X-ac: 1.ord _dca

From the single-post view:

^{Seen at https://wordpress.com/read/post/feed/36161285/www.example.com using Chrome 43.0.2357.132 on Mac OS X 10.10.4}

↪ curl -I https://wordpress.com/read/post/feed/36161285/www.example.com
HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Server: nginx
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2015 01:37:10 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Connection: keep-alive
Vary: Cookie
X-hacker: If you're reading this, you should visit automattic.com/jobs and apply to join the fun, mention this header.
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
Expires: Wed, 11 Jan 1984 05:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate, max-age=0
Pragma: no-cache
Location: https://wordpress.com/wp-login.php?redirect_to=https%3A%2F%2Fwordpress.com%2Fread%2Fpost%2Ffeed%2F36161285%2Fwww.example.com&reauth=1
X-ac: 1.ord _dca

^{Moved from 6930-wpcom}

[blowery]

I think all the 302s are correct, if non-ideal, as we require a login to view those pages.

This does expose that lists and the full post view are dealing with missing things badly and we should definitely fix that.

[stale]

This issue has been marked as stale because it hasn't been updated in a while. It will be closed in a week. If you would like it to remain open, can you please comment below and see what you can do to get things moving with this issue? Thanks! 🙏