Theme's 404 can't be exported (because it returns a 404?)

[meredevelopment]

We have a custom 404 page. As with most WordPress installs, it's available at /404/ and returns a 404 when served.

So... WP2Static thinks it's failed and skips it:

Can anyone think of a way around this? I guess we could point the S3 error doc at another normal page, and make sure it returns a 404 status from S3.

[leonstafford]

Hi @meredevelopment - common complaint around 404 handling.. will depend a bit on the target deployment, S3, in your case.

Could you please give me some ideas as to how you'd like to see it work, ie: options in the S3 export to set a specific 404 page from a non-404 page in your WP site, via S3 or CloudFront.

I'd prefer to make it configurable, rather than impose my opinions... thinking out loud, we could in this case:

Drop-down on S3 export options to offer:

S3 bucket static website error page handling

• do nothing
• choose page to use as 404 (enter WP URL)

CloudFront distribution error page handling

• do nothing
• choose page to use as 404 (enter WP URL)

Though WP has it's own methods for 404 page defining, along with plugins adding more functionality, we can't (easily) replicate any dynamic 404 responses, so I'd rather we use a non-404 page, allowing it to be more easily crawled by WP2Static.

Please add your thoughts. The S3 add-on is due for a few much needed improvements soon and we can get something like the above implemented fairly quickly.

Cheers

[Zyles]

What is the solution to include a 404 page?

[ml4den]

It would be great if we could get 404.html rendered in the root folder by default. From then on people can set up their redirects as required based on their hosting.