410 Gone for Archived/Unpublished Content

Returns 410 Gone instead of 403 Forbidden for archived or unpublished content, so search engines drop it from their index.

By default, Drupal answers 403 when an anonymous visitor requests unpublished content. Search engines read that as "private, still exists" and keep retrying. A 410 tells them the content was removed on purpose.

Features

• 410 for moderated content that is unpublished and in a chosen moderation state (default: archived).
• Optional 410 for unpublished content types without a moderation workflow (enabled by default).
• Built-in "content gone" page, or any internal path as a custom 410 page. Falls back to the built-in page if the custom path is invalid or not accessible.
• Theme suggestions page--410 and page--4xx.
• JSON, AJAX and dialog requests get a 410 in their own format.
• Cache-aware: cached 410s are cleared when the node or the settings change.
• Optional logging of each 410 to the archived_410 channel. Core no longer logs these as "access denied".

What it does not change

• Logged-in users keep the 403.
• Published content never returns 410.
• Only the node page and its REST GET resource are affected. Edit, delete, revision, media and image style routes keep the 403.

Requirements

• Drupal 11.1 or later (2.x). The 1.x branch is unsupported.
• Core Content Moderation. A workflow is optional.

Configuration

Go to Administration » Configuration » System » Archived 410 settings (/admin/config/system/archived-410).

Upgrading from the 1.x patch

Sites using the patch from #3592401: remove the patch, require drupal/archived_410:^2.0@beta, and rebuild caches. No database update is needed. See the README for details.