Custom 404 page and proper status code together? How?

[levicki]

Hi all,

Another small issue I am having is as follows.

I have a custom 404.php page which shows site navigation and a google search box set to search the site by default.

In some of my php files I have a need to return 404 status to the client (for example wrong category, or filename, etc).

But if I do:

Header("HTTP/1.1 404 File Not Found");

The client gets a blank page instead of my custom 404.php page.

If on the other hand I do this:

Header("Location: /404.php");

Then the browser (and the googlebot as well) first get 302 response code, than 200 OK code which are both wrong.

In other words, I can either return 404 status code, but my custom 404 page doesn't show or I can show the page but send the wrong status code.

I am pulling my hair over this one so I would appreciate any help.

[levicki]

Never mind I solved it:

function NotFound()
{
	ob_start();
	include('/path/to/your/custom/error/page/404.php');
	$contents = ob_get_contents();
	ob_end_clean();
	Header('HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found');
	Header('Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache');
	Header('Content-Length: '.strlen($contents));
	echo $contents;
	exit();
}

Now just call NotFound() wherever you need provided that the output hasn't already started which shouldn't be a problem because it is always better to do all the checking before starting the output.