Hiding empty categories and out of stock products

[billteale]

how do I hide the 0 stock and empty categories from public view?

[llegrand]

You can look at the categories  and the product grids in your Admin dashboard - 

they will show which ones have 0 in them.   The Off/on setting is on the same line.  Set the the switch to Off to not show them on SF.   Don't forget to save the changes.

Don't forget to tune them on when you have items in them.

To the best of my knowledge there is no automatic way to have them hide

[Sam_78]

Yes that is the best solution you can do is control manually
You can also do a redirect means if customer lands on not found page you can redirect them to home page
to do this you need to edit this file  ....\template\pages\error\not_found.tpl
add the below lines on top of the file

<script type="text/javascript">
    window.onload = function() {
        setTimeout(function() {
            window.location = "/";
        }, 5000);
    };
</script>


This will redirect not found page to your home page within 5 seconds