Question

I have Apache and PHP setup and i am using a .htaccess file to auto_prepend a file to any output.

The problem is when I want to output a 404 error using

<?php header("HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found"); ?>

It still outputs the header as the auto_prepended file has already been processed.

.htaccess file

php_value date.timezone 'Europe/London'
php_value auto_prepend_file load.php

load.php

<?php

    // Set the error reporting level (DEV)
    error_reporting(E_ALL);
    ini_set("display_errors", 1);

    // Load the configuration file
    include("config/config.php");

    session_start();

?>

So the load file includes the include for the config file so that it is set on every page that loads.

So at the moment I have some pages which are giving soft 404 errors rather than actual 404 errors, so if there is no data returned for say browsing to /image/123 because image 123 doesnt actually exist, I output a “This image doesnt exist” so this then causes problem for google or any other crawler as it can keep going from /image/123 …. /image/12222222333333444444 etc… So it actually needs to output a proper 404.

Hope someone can help.

Answer 1

I have found the answer in: PHP header 404 not working

<?php
header("HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found");
exit("<h1>Not Found</h1>
The requested URL " . $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"] . " was not found on this server.
<hr>");
?>

This gives the correct 404 output.