Custom 404 error does not always appear

Question

I recently created a website at www.volatileinterface.com, using WordPress. I am using the cyanotype theme and I wanted to create a custom 404 error page for when a webpage could not be found. I edited 404.php to look like this.

  <?php

get_header(); ?>

    <div id="primary" class="content-area">

        <div id="content" class="site-content" role="main">



            <div class="page-content">

        <img src="/deadend.jpg"></img>
                <p><?php _e( 'It looks like nothing was found at this location. Maybe try a search?', 'twentyfourteen' ); ?></p>
                <?php get_search_form(); ?>

            </div><!-- .page-content -->

       </div><!-- #content -->

   </div><!-- #primary -->

<?php

get_sidebar( 'content' );

get_sidebar();

get_footer();

When I go to a page that doesn't exist such as http://www.volatileinterface.com/index.php/jargon the website and 404 error page appear fine. However, when I go to a page like this http://www.volatileinterface.com/jargon that does not have index.php in its address the broswer just goes to the default 404 error page. How do I always make the browser go to my custom 404 error page?

Answer 1

WordPress doesn't receive those requests, so the server 404 displays. If you want WordPress to handle all 404s, use mod_rewrite Pretty Permalinks rather than PATHINFO permalinks. The requirements are detailed in Using Permalinks.

Answer 2

set a permalink structure on settings> permalinks . WordPress needs to create the .htaccess file.