Redirecting 404 error with .htaccess via 301 for SEO etc

Question

I couldn\'t find a straight answer to my question and need to know it from the real experts.

I had a website which urls were generated by Joomla. I believe that tons

Answer 1

You will need to know something about the URLs, like do they have a specific directory or some query string element because you have to match for something. Otherwise you will have to redirect on the 404. If this is what is required then do something like this in your .htaccess:

ErrorDocument 404 /index.php

An error page redirect must be relative to root so you cannot use www.mydomain.com.

If you have a pattern to match too then use 301 instead of 302 because 301 is permanent and 302 is temporary. A 301 will get the old URLs removed from the search engines and the 302 will not.

Mod Rewrite Reference: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/mod/mod_rewrite.html

Answer 2

I came up with the solution and posted it on my blog

http://web.archive.org/web/20130310123646/http://onlinemarketingexperts.com.au/2013/01/how-to-permanently-redirect-301-all-404-missing-pages-in-htaccess/

here is the htaccess code also

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule . / [L,R=301]

but I posted other solutions on my blog too, it depends what you need really