Why doesn't 404 kick in when a bad URL is entered?

Question

Most people don't want to get a 404 page, however, I am having issues with a site where 404 pages don't show when you enter an erroneous URL.

Example: http://livefreehomehealthcare.com/products/asdasdasdasd/ does not exist, but instead of a 404 page, which has been created and works (see example), I get the products page or segment_1 of the URL.

It appears that if segment_1 is a valid part of the URL then the strict URL rule that should redirect to the 404 page doesn't fire properly.

I am running EE 2.5.2

Update: MediaGirl suggested below that I use the require_entry="yes" parameter in the channel tags. I did this and it works too well.

Here's what I mean. I am using the index template of the template group for the "home" page for the section so that "our products" shows up as /products/ instead of /products/our-products. Here is the code:

{exp:channel:entries channel="products" entry_id="12"}
<h2>{title}</h2>
{body}
{/exp:channel:entries}

This displays the content fine, but is also open to 404 failure. So I tried this:

{exp:channel:entries channel="products" entry_id="12" require_entry="yes"}
{if no_results}{redirect="404"}{/if}    
<h2>{title}</h2>
{body}
{/exp:channel:entries}

When I do it this way 404 works too well and I can't see the contents of the /product/ page.

Is there a happy medium here?

Any ideas for getting this to work correctly would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Since you are hard-coding an entry_id in your channel:entries tag in your products/index template, and as long you don't need any additional url segments to trigger other behavior (such as pagination or for dynamically loading another entry), you could just do this:

{exp:channel:entries channel="products" entry_id="12"}
    {if segment_2 != ""}
        {redirect="404"}
    {/if}
    <h2>{title}</h2>
    {body}
{/exp:channel:entries}

Answer 2

There are 3 things that should fix this.

1. Assign your 404 error template in your "Global Template Preferences" which can be found at Design > Templates > Template Preferences

2. In your products template, add the require_entry="yes" parameter to your channel:entries tag

3. Inside that channel:entries tag add the following to redirect incorrect requests to the 404:

   {if no_results}{redirect="404"}{/if}

Answer 3

If you're using dynamic:

{
    exp:channel:entries
    channel="product"
    dynamic="yes"
}

Make sure you add

    require_entry="yes"

Otherwise EE will load ALL entries... in other words:

if(entry found) {
    show entry;
}
else if (dynamic && !require_entry) {
    denial_of_service_attack(self);
}