Page as 404

Take control of your site’s 404 Page Not Found error response with this simple, lightweight and core-friendly plugin.

Out of the box, WordPress treats 404 pages as a technical matter, with themes encouraged to include a hard-coded 404.php template. But that means it’s difficult for site owners to make changes.

404 pages have become a space for websites and publishers to have a little fun, putting a smile on visitors’ faces as their journey is halted. They can also serve a useful navigational purpose, guiding users to the site’s latest or most popular content, or offering a search box.

By using WordPress’s built-in Pages feature, you can design and serve a feature-rich 404 page, making full use of WordPress content and navigation blocks. And you can edit and maintain it as easily as any other Page.

Just activate this plugin, then select your desired Page from the dropdown list on the Settings → Reading page.

Developer documentation and source code are available on GitHub.

Development

This plugin uses modern build tooling for development.

Source code is publicly available at:
https://github.com/rareview/page-as-404

Build process

JavaScript and CSS assets are compiled for distribution.
The uncompiled source code and build instructions can be found in the repository above.

Typical development workflow:

• composer install
• composer lint
• composer format
• npm install
• npm run watch or npm run build

PHP dependencies are managed with Composer for development purposes only.
The distributed plugin includes only the compiled assets required at runtime.

1. Upload and activate the plugin in the usual way
2. Create and publish a Not Found page.
3. Go to your site's Settings → Reading page
4. Choose your Not Found page from the dropdown list.
5. Save your updated Settings.