301 Redirect to Custom 404page? AAAHHHH!

Apparently, my replies are being eaten by the forums again 🙂

Have you tried using a fully qualified URL for the redirect in your .htaccess file?

That code tells me you had static page called "404page" inside WordPress. So theoretically, your /404page.php directive shouldn't have worked, but I seem to recall something in WordPress where near matches would pull up a page... I ran into that problem with pages that should have returned 404s calling up pages with partial words in them, but they don't do that anymore... I never dug into that to see why, so I don't know for sure if that was a WordPress change, but I remember something along those lines changing between 3.5 and 3.6.

So using that exact URL in your .htaccess file as you have it in that snippet should also have worked in your .htaccess file, IF that static page still exists at that URL.

Is the URL you're working on the one in your first post? Because that page does come up, but the text on it is unfinished. So if you put that URL in your .htaccess file, and test it by going to a URL on your site you know doesn't exist, that 404page URL should come up for you.

Well, when I try to access that page now, I get this error:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '(', expecting T_VARIABLE or '$' in smallbusinessyou.com/wp-content/uploads/dynamik-gen/theme/custom-functions.php on line 50

And if I go to a URL that generates a 404 error, a 404 page does come up. Which page are you trying to have be your 404 page, and what error were you getting before?

FFS, why is the forum eating every post I submit that has code quoted in it?

Anyway, your custom 404page is generating a PHP syntax error, while a regular not found destination is pulling up a generic 404 page.

What is it exactly that isn't working?

I was curious about the PHP syntax error, but that seems to be fixed now.

So, the destination you want all error pages to use is http://smallbusinessyou.com/404page/ right?

Right now, if I use a bogus URL to that domain, it comes up with a default 404 page, which means that another template or a default template is in the mix somewhere.

There are several ways to change this.

First, make sure there is no 404.php template in your theme folder, and that any 404 plugins or other 404 redirects are disabled.

Then, make sure the ErrorDocument directive in htaccess uses the complete URL, http://smallbusinessyou.com/404page/

or... take the content from that 404page page, and make it the content of your 404.php template, and remove the ErrorDocument directive from your htaccess file and unpublish that page.

If you paste your content into the 404.php in the theme folder (properly wrapped in php of course), and it uses the same sidebars as the other templates/rest of your site (meaning you don't remove them like on a landing page), then yes it should be the same.

From my understanding, Dynamik should generate what you need, and if it's working, it should always work unless you remove Dynamik from your site. If that's working now, you should be good to go.

This is one of those cases where there are several solutions, and depending on what you need, there isn't one solution that's better or more "right" than another.