htaccess 404 redirect does not working - php

Question

I have a .htaccess file to manage rewrite_rules on my website. I also set a 404 redirect command to navigate visitors to a specefied page if they enter a wrong URL. But this redirect does not working and I get 500 Internal Server Error if visitor request an invalid URL. Below is some part of my codes:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([0-9]+)/([^/]+)/?$ index.php?lang=$1&page=$2&id=$3&des=$4 [NC,QSA,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/([^/]+)/(p[0-9]+)/?$ index.php?lang=$1&page=$2&pn=$3 [NC,QSA,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/([^/]+)/?$ index.php?lang=$1&page=$2 [NC,QSA,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/?$ index.php?lang=$1&page=home [NC,QSA,L]
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.mywebsite.com/404/
What is missing in my code that causes this problem?

Answer 1

The culprit, by seeing all of your .htaccess rules is:
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1 [NS,E=no-gzip:1,E=dont-vary:1]
Giving your sample URL http://www.domain.com/en/news/1/something/test/, when a URL does not match with defined rules it hits this last rewrite rule and it falls into an infinite loop:
applying pattern '^([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([0-9]+)/([^/]+)/?$' to uri 'en/news/1/something/test/'
...
applying pattern '^([^/]+)/([^/]+)/(p[0-9]+)/?$' to uri 'en/news/1/something/test/'
...
applying pattern '^([^/]+)/([^/]+)/?$' to uri 'en/news/1/something/test/'
...
applying pattern '^([^/]+)/?$' to uri 'en/news/1/something/test/'
...
applying pattern '^(.*)$' to uri 'en/news/1/something/test/'
...
Then we have a recursion start:
applying pattern '^([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([0-9]+)/([^/]+)/?$' to uri 'en/news/1/something/test/'
...
Although a URL like http://www.domain.com/en/news/1/wrong is not found, it's caught by a defined rule (first rule) and we don't encounter any recursion. So this internal error is not thrown on all not found pages but those that are not caught by a rule.
I don't see it right, just remove it.

Answer 2

you should put
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
in the start and
</IfModule>
in the end of your .htaccess code

Answer 3

Try adding this rule to the top of your htaccess:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^404/?$ /pages/errors/404.php [L]
Then under that :
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule ^ http://domain.com/404/ [L,R]

Answer 4

You can use an EroorDocument directive to forword non existent requests to a specific destination
Test this in an empty .htaccess file
ErrorDocument 404 /page.php

Answer 5

Check below code, I have write with various scenario.
ErrorDocument 404 http://example.com/404/
ErrorDocument 500 http://example.com/500/
# or map them to one error document:
# ErrorDocument 404 /pages/errors/error_redirect.php
# ErrorDocument 500 /pages/errors/error_redirect.php
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/404/$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /pages/errors/404.php [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/500/$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /pages/errors/500.php [L]
# or map them to one error document:
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/404/$ [OR]
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/500/$
#RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /pages/errors/error_redirect.php [L]

Answer 6

It seems your mentioned URL after ErrorDocument is not valid or is not reachable.
So, what happening is that when it gets a 404 it redirects to your URL, and it gets a 404 again.
Forms a recursive loop.
Getting my point. ?
Try with a simple static html page.
I hope this shall work.

Answer 7

Custom 404 will never work if you add domain like http://www.mywebsite.com/404/ (it's not coding karma), when you type url like this it will ended up in 500 error. It means it executed 404 but redirected user to 500 error due to wrongly configured htaccess.
When error comes in series of 4XX are knows as client side errors and 5XX known as server side errors. For detailed info, 2XX known as Success & 3XX known as Redirection.
So here is quick try (i assume you have 404 html file)
ErrorDocument 404 /404.html
instead of
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.mywebsite.com/404/
I also have tested this code at my side and it worked. Please try out
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([0-9]+)/([^/]+)/?$ index.php?lang=$1&page=$2&id=$3&des=$4 [NC,QSA,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/([^/]+)/(p[0-9]+)/?$ index.php?lang=$1&page=$2&pn=$3 [NC,QSA,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/([^/]+)/?$ index.php?lang=$1&page=$2 [NC,QSA,L]
ErrorDocument 404 /404.html

Answer 8

Try this one:
ErrorDocument 404 /404/

Answer 9

Try adding before rewriterules
RewriteEngine On