How to rewrite 404 to home page using htaccess?

Question

I know how to do this using php, but need to redirect using htaccess.

If I use this rule: ErrorDocument 404 /index.php then I still get the error page. Looks like wordpress identifies that this is 404 error and serves 404 message, not the homepage content as needed.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

There are a couple of ways to do this.

1. If you're using a custom theme or a child theme, add (or edit) a theme file called 404.php. The contents of that file should be:

<?php header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently"); header("Location: ".get_bloginfo('url')); exit(); ?>

2. You can add this code as a plugin, or put it in your (custom or child) theme's functions.php file:

<?php function redirect_404s() { if(is_404()) { wp_redirect(home_url(), '301'); } } add_action('wp_enqueue_scripts', 'redirect_404s'); ?>