Redirect not found pages

[wemustdesign]

At the moment when a user goes to a non existant or old page such as index.php?x=sample they are automactially directed to the homepage.

 

How can I redirect these to a custom 'page not found page' in the .htaccess?

[cags]

ErrorDocument 404 /404.html

 

Obviously /404.html is the path to the file you wish to display.

[wemustdesign]

But how do I get redirect the user to this when a page is not found rather than it automatically redirecting to the homepage?

[PradeepKr]

Put this in your .htaccess file (of course create your custom page and name it "my-401-page.php")

 

ErrorDocument 401 /my-401-page.php

[cags]

I guess I don't understand the question. That's exactly what the 'code' I provided does. If Apache see's a page isn't found then it will automatically redirect to that page, that's the whole point of the directive. If you are trying to say that a page does exist, but you are deciding in a PHP script that some content doesn't exist (i.e. vanity URLs and a user that doesn't exist) then you can just use a header('Location: /404.html'); but that isn't a page not found or mod_rewrite related question.

 

@PradeepKr

401 is an unauthorised error message, it has nothing to do with page not found.