URL rewrite before template_redirect called

Question

Logic

• I have a page template at /blog that contains a "public" blog.
• I have a page template at /members that is members area.

If a user enters the URL /members/blog I want to catch this in the template_redirect hook and load up a custom template that shows a "private" blog

Problem

Before template_redirect is called /members/blog is re-written to /blog so I can't load the private blog page.

There is nothing in the rewrite rules that says to do this.

Answer 1

So the problem was redirect_guess_404_permalink was detecting a 404 error and 'guessed' /members/blog to be /blog

My hacky solution was to hook into the status error check (Stop Wordpress from "guessing" redirects for nonexistent URLs) and if URL parts match then unset the guessed solution

function blog_no_redirect_guess_404_permalink( $header ){
    global $wp_query;

    if( is_404() ) {
        // Get Request URL Parts
        $url = parse_url($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
        $path = explode('/', $url['path']);
        $path = array_filter($path);
        $path = array_merge($path, array());
        // If matches /members/blog then unset 'guess'
        if (strtolower($path[0]) == 'members' && strtolower($path[1]) == 'blog') {
            unset( $wp_query->query_vars['name'] );
        }
    }

    return $header;
}
add_filter( 'status_header', 'blog_no_redirect_guess_404_permalink' );