: Question about mod_rewrite rule for redirecting failing pages I'm setting up a mod_rewrite rule that redirects failing pages to a custom "Page Not Found" page. This is with WordPress. I've used

@Ogunnowo487

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f



My question is, out of curiosity why the following happens: When I change REQUEST_FILENAME to REQUEST_URI (as the second example suggests), the page loads, but none of the style sheets load. All of my formatting is gone, and this happens on every page.


REQUEST_FILENAME and REQUEST_URI contain different values in per-directory htaccess files. REQUEST_FILENAME is the full local filesystem path to the file, whereas REQUEST_URI is the path component of the requested URI (which is not necessarily an actual file on the filesystem).

-f tests whether the TestString is a regular file, which the REQUEST_URI is often not - this is probably why requests for your stylesheets are being redirected.

It would seem, however, that the REQUEST_URI for your main page is being seen as a regular file (or other directives are getting to the request first). This will depend on your URL structure and possibly other directives in your .htaccess file.

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@Angela700

For setting custom 404s, you should be able to do that much easier (even in .htaccess), like so:

ErrorDocument 404 example.com/?page_id=254

See also: ErrorDocument

Less messy and significantly less CPU use per request than mod_rewrite - anything that 404s just goes straight there, no questions asked. I'd definitely consider making any errordoc a static page if possible though, especially if you stretch it to handle other errors (no fun when your 500 errordoc throws a 500 error).

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