Question

I just did the following in htaccess:

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.website.com

My first question is, it is OK for me to do this?

If there are any SEO/etc., etc. problems with redirecting 404’s to
the homepage let me know.

Second question:

The thing is I have a one-page site and I’d like to keep it that way.

What I would like to do is have a popup div show up, as an alternative to a 404 page.

So basically 404’s get redirected to the homepage, where a popup then fades in with whatever 404 message in it.

How could I trigger the popup? The jquery code would somehow have to know that the user ended up here due to a 404. Is this even doable?

(I can manage the popup itself, but how to tell it to show up after
a 404 happens.)

Answer 1

You can add a query string to the URL that you’re using as the 404 page.

.htaccess

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.website.com?page=fourOhFour

Then, check to see if the variable is set to the proper value and if it is, create a variable in javascript.

Javascript/PHP

<script>
  is404 = "<?php echo $_GET['page'] ?>";
  if (is404 === "fourOhFour"){
    // jQuery popup code here
  }
</script>