CODEWITHSUNDEEP
.htaccesshttp-redirecthttp-status-code-404
Margate
Margate

Reputation: 421

404 Redirect or better option

I have the following code in my htaccess file to handle 404 codes:

ErrorDocument 404 https://www.mywebsite.co.uk/lost.php
RewriteEngine On

And of course a custom 404 page is returned (works fine).

I did a nibbler check and it said the following:

It is a common mistake to setup missing page handling by using a redirect. The missing page should directly return a 404 error and not redirect to another page.

This website does not return a 404 error HTTP status code for missing pages. This is bad because search engines like Google might mistake this for a real page of content.

What is the best practice to handle 404 error codes if the above is no good? I am just wanting something generic that is a catch all. No need to use a 301 because the point of my 404 is just to let visitors know that what they are looking for is not there or they have made a typo.

If it is a "common mistake" to to use a redirect how should it be done?

Thank you for any help.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1653

Answers (2)

anubhava
anubhava

Reputation: 786291

You need to remove https:// or http:// from 404 handler otherwise it forces Apache to do a full redirect instead of internal rewrite.

So you can use:

ErrorDocument 404 /lost.php

Upvotes: 2

Martin Cup
Martin Cup

Reputation: 2582

It depends. If you have an application running on the webserver that takes in every URL coming in and has some logic implemented, that by itself has to figure out if the URL exists, then the application should directly return a 404 error page under the given URL and not redirect to another page like 404.html or so. But if your webserver handles the url requests with the .htaccess file then it is OK to setup a document that is returned in case of an invalid URL.

Upvotes: 1

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