Redirecting old post url to 404 in wordpress using htaccess

Question

In WordPress I have a post with URL https://www.example.com/article.html.

I renamed its permalink to https://www.example.com/article-new.html.

Now if I open the old URL https://www.example.com/article.html then it auto 301 redirects to https://www.example.com/article-new.html due to the WordPress built-in feature by default.

However, I want to show a 404 when someone tries to open https://www.example.com/article.html.

I tried putting this in .htaccess but it gives a 500 server error instead:

RewriteEngine On
Redirect 404 /article.html

Please advise.

Answer 1

I think doing this within WordPress is probably the preferred approach, as mentioned in @Harrison's answer, however, to answer your specific queries...

RewriteEngine On
Redirect 404 /article.html

Aside: The RewriteEngine directive relates to mod_rewrite, however, Redirect is a mod_alias directive - so these two directives are unrelated.

However, this should "work" with a default WordPress front-controller, so maybe you have a conflict with other directives in your .htaccess file?

Try the following instead, using mod_rewrite at the top of your .htaccess file (before any existing WordPress directives):

RewriteRule ^article\.html$ - [R=404]

If this still results in an error, then try resetting the 404 error document (to the Apache default) before this:

ErrorDocument 404 default

You'll need to clear your browser cache to clear the cached (permanent) 301 redirect to the new URL.

Answer 2

I don't know about the right way to change htaccess, but you could try manually redirecting the old url to your 404 template. Adapted from this post:

Use a template file for a specific url without creating a page

Using your example URL slug:

function wpse_manual_redirect( ){
    $str = 'article.html';
    $url = parse_url( add_query_arg( array() ), PHP_URL_PATH );
    $url_length = strlen($url);
    $last_segment = substr( $url , $url_length - strlen( $str ) );

    if ( $last_segment === $str ){
        $load = locate_template( '404.php', true );
        if ( $load ){
            exit();
        }

    }


}

add_action( 'init', 'wpse_manual_redirect' );

Include in functions.php.