Non-existant subdirectory URLs display a blank white page instead of redirecting to homepage

Question

Currently, I have Strict URLs disabled in my global preferences so that if somebody tries to access a page that doesn't exist, it will just bring them to the homepage. However, this only works on pages that are in the root of the folder structure. For instance if I go to http://mysite.com/nonexistant it will reroute me to the homepage as it should, but if I go to http://mysite.com/about/nonexistant it presents a blank white page.

I tried enabling Strict URLs and specifying a 404 page(because this will be what I do eventually) and the same issue occurred. http://mysite.com/nonexistant shows me my 404 page, but http://mysite.com/about/nonexistant displays a blank white page.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

http://mysite.com/about/non-existent will load the http://mysite.com/about template.

This is because EE looks at that second segment automatically for a number of things... if there isn't a template name there it will try to load an entry with that url_title into the /about template.

To stop this behavior, add this into the /about template:

{if segment_2 != ""}
    {redirect="404"}
{/if}