How do I skip wordpress's 404 handling and redirect all 404 errors for static files to 404.html?

Question

How do I skip wordpress's 404 handling and redirect all 404 errors for static files to 404.html?

I read and it seems its not possible when using permalinks?

The objective is to reduce the server load for 404 errors by not loading php.

Answer 1

.htaccess skip WordPress 404 error handling for static files.

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
        RewriteEngine On
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(robots\.txt|sitemap\.xml(\.gz)?)
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} \.(css|js|html|htm|rtf|rtx|svg|svgz|txt|xsd|xsl|xml|asf|asx|wax|wmv|wmx|avi|bmp|class|divx|doc|docx|exe|gif|gz|gzip|ico|jpg|jpeg|jpe|mdb|mid|midi|mov|qt|mp3|m4a|mp4|m4v|mpeg|mpg|mpe|mpp|odb|odc|odf|odg|odp|ods|odt|ogg|pdf|png|pot|pps|ppt|pptx|ra|ram|swf|tar|tif|tiff|wav|wma|wri|xla|xls|xlsx|xlt|xlw|zip)$ [NC]
        RewriteRule .* - [L]
    </IfModule>

Note: These rules were generated by the W3 Total Cache plugin*

Nginx skip WordPress 404 handling for static files.

if (-f $request_filename) {
    break;
}
if (-d $request_filename) {
    break;
}
if ($request_uri ~ "(robots\.txt|sitemap\.xml(\.gz)?)") {
    break;
}
if ($request_uri ~* \.(css|js|html|htm|rtf|rtx|svg|svgz|txt|xsd|xsl|xml|asf|asx|wax|wmv|wmx|avi|bmp|class|divx|doc|docx|exe|gif|gz|gzip|ico|jpg|jpeg|jpe|mdb|mid|midi|mov|qt|mp3|m4a|mp4|m4v|mpeg|mpg|mpe|mpp|odb|odc|odf|odg|odp|ods|odt|ogg|pdf|png|pot|pps|ppt|pptx|ra|ram|swf|tar|tif|tiff|wav|wma|wri|xla|xls|xlsx|xlt|xlw|zip)$) {
    return 404;
}

Answer 2

simple solution: use the conditional tag is_404() and create an redirect to your static file; include the code in the header.php or index.php of the theme. maybe a example from scratch.

   if ( is_404() ) {
      wp_redirect( 'static.htm' );
      exit;
   }

links

• http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wp_redirect
• http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/is_404

Answer 3

I'm not sure that this is possible. If you look at the htaccess code that WordPress creates when you enable permalinks, it basically says: "If the file/directory cannot be found, send it to index.php." This includes all actual 404 requests. Outside of creating a list of every dynamically-generated public resource that WordPress knows of and directly inserting this into .htaccess, you'll need to load php to handle the 404's.

Answer 4

To extend on what Chris_O said....I would install W3 Total Cache and use the settings from that plugin to not cache static files. The plugin in itself is very useful and a must to speed up your site, especially with the latest update.

Also I recommend you have a look at Creating an Error 404 Page from Wordpress to see how to handle 404 for static files, 403 (forbidden), etc. Its a good read.

Answer 5

There are 3 ways of doing this

1. By changing your 404.php code.
2. By using wordpress plugins.
3. By editing your .htaccess file .

Complete tutorial - How to Redirect 404 Error in WordPress