Redirect to 404 page or display 404 message?

Question

I am using a cms, and file-not-found errors can be handled in different ways:

1. The page will not be redirected, but an error-msg will be displayed as content (u

Answer 1

If it's not found, then you should issue a 404 page. Doing a redirect causes a 302 code, followed by a '200 OK', implying that there IS some content. A 404 flat out says "there is no file. stop bugging me".

Something like this would present a 404 page with proper header code: