htaccess 404 error redirection for /cat/sub/.html like urls

Question

Hi friends,

How can I redirect such link (below) to 404 error page?

http://www.blabla.com/category/sub/.html

I generate a SEO friendly links, normally products has url like blabla.com/category/sub/product.html

the page doesnt give any error. it just display blank content. I mean i can see static texts like CATEGORY NAME header and but there is no dynamic categoryname next to that, because of url is wrong and cant get record from db. page doesnt display dynamic contents, but display static contents

Appreciate helps!! thanks

Answer 1

You should use .htaccess to catch the error:

ErrorDocument 400 /errors/400.html
ErrorDocument 401 /errors/401.html
ErrorDocument 403 /errors/403.html
ErrorDocument 404 /errors/404.html
ErrorDocument 500 /errors/500.html

Apache will know now that it needs to load one of these pages depending on what error occured. You can instead us a php script (e.g. 404.php) for a dynamic solution.

That means http://www.blabla.com/category/sub/.html will display an error message, and the server will generate an error header (404 in this case) so search engines won't crawl it.

You use this code by creating a file in your http root directory called .htaccess and plasting the code inside. .htaccess is not a file extention, but a file itself.

More information can be found here

Answer 2

if the query don't result any row, you can set the header for 404 - not found and redirect to a 404 page

for example:

<?php    

    //$rows is the num_rows of the query
    if ($rows > 0) {    
      //your code here    
    } else {    
      header("HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found"); 
      header("Location: 404.html");
      exit();
    }

?>

Answer 3

Do not redirect! A redirect (30x) is not the same as sending a 404! Just send the proper status code along with your error document:

if (!$documentFound) {
    header($_SERVER['SERVER_PROTOCOL'].' 404 Not Found', true, 404);
    readfile('error404.html');
    exit;
}