Soft 404 is happening, but only once

  • Resolved juliolopez78

    (@juliolopez78)


    10 years, 6 months ago

    So I have a site that is behaving somewhat strangely when it comes to 404s. I find that when I first visit a link that should return a 404, the browser gets redirected to the home page. This is a soft 404, right? To the best of my knowledge, I have not done anything to enable that.

    What’s even stranger is that a subsequent visit will return a proper 404 and serve up the 404.php file from the site’s theme.

    Stranger still is if I reset the browser history (cache, etc.) I can replicate this error over and over (Soft 404 only once, then proper 404s forever after). I’ve tried on several browsers and I get the same result.

    I’m kinda losing my mind trying to figure out what’s happening here, so if anyone has run into this before, please let me now.

    The site is https://www.youthsolidarityproject.ca. You can use the url https://www.youthsolidarityproject.ca/nothing-here/ to test this.

    The site is running 3.9.1 with a custom-built template and the following plugins:

    • Block Bad Queries (BBQ)
    • Gravity Forms
    • Gravity Forms Multilingual
    • Installer
    • Twitter Ultimate
    • WPML Multilingual CMS
    • WPML String Translation
    • WPML Translation Management

    Haven’t yet turned off all the plugins to see if they affect this, it’s a live site, trying to figure out a time when the impact will be minimized.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

  • Can you replicate the problem using the default Twenty Fourteen theme with all other plugins deactivated?

    Thread Starter juliolopez78

    (@juliolopez78)

    Hello all, I disabled all plugins and turned them all on one by one and it is the WPML Multilingual CMS plugin causing the issue. And didn’t even have to use twentyfourteen. It’s a paid plugin and they offer support. I’ll follow up with them. I’ll post the solution back here tho so that others can benefit from the knowledge.

    Thread Starter juliolopez78

    (@juliolopez78)

    OK so I learned that there is a WPML setting called Browser language redirect that was the culprit. It is a setting that will try to remember a visitor’s language pref and try to redirect to the appropriate language page. In my case it was turned on and obviously conflicting with my 404 page. In my case this feature is not that necessary so I have turned it off and the problem has been solved.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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