.htaccess redirect to 404 page RewriteRule

Question

Is there a way to enter a RewriteRule in the htaccess file to redirect to a 404 page if a certain folder/url path as been typed or reached?

For example, if I want every user to be redirected to a 404 page if they get to: www.mydomain.com/abc or www.mydomain.com/abc/ or whatever that comes after "abc", even if that folder really exists, I do not want the users to be able to reach it. If they do reach it, I want them to see the 404 error page. * Please note I am not looking to set up a custom 404 error page, I am looking for a way to redirect to the default 404 page.

How can I do it? Is it possible?

RewriteRule ^abc/(*)?$ [R=404,L]

And how can I do the same thing in php, redirect to a 404 error page? Once again I am not talking about setting a custom 404 page, I am talking about the default 404 page, to simply redirect a user to the 404 error page using php.

Have you tried changing permissions such that the pages in /abc/ are not readable by the apache user, preventing the general public from accessing those pages? — ford, Oct 11 '11 at 23:57
I did try all of your solutions and they are all good so thank you for the suggestions. The one that best suits my needs is a RewriteRule that matches the folder and redirect it to a custom 404. — user977191, Oct 12 '11 at 00:34

score 42 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 11 '11 at 23:45

42

Instead of using mod_rewrite, you can do this with a RedirectMatch directive:

RedirectMatch 404 ^/abc/.*$

answered Oct 11 '11 at 23:45

Michał Wojciechowski

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RedirectMatch 404 "/abc*" did the job. Thanks for your suggestion. – user977191 Oct 12 '11 at 00:35
@Michal Wojciechowski Hi! I used your solution to prevent access to maindomain.com/addon.com. Do you know if it's possible to use it also for preventing access to addon.maindomain.com ? Pls See my question https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51268061/htaccess-redirect-to-404-addons-and-subdomains-stopped-working . Thanks – codeispoetry Jul 10 '18 at 14:45

score 9 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 23 '17 at 20:40

9

I did this on my website:

RewriteRule ^404/?$ 404.php
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.example.com/404/

And on the root of my website I placed a 404.php page to customize that page.

answered Jan 23 '17 at 20:40

paulalexandru

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.htaccess redirect to 404 page RewriteRule

2 Answers2

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