Title: Odd 404 behavior
Last modified: August 19, 2016

---

# Odd 404 behavior

 *  [Nicki Faulk](https://wordpress.org/support/users/nitallica/)
 * (@nitallica)
 * [17 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/odd-404-behavior/)
 * I noticed some odd behavior just after upgrading to 2.5. I upgraded again today
   to see if 2.5.1 fixes it, and it didn’t. I didn’t notice this when I had 2.3.3
   so unknown if it happened then too.
 * Any way, the problem is that even though I have a 404.php file in my theme and
   even have the if 404 bit in my index.php, whenever an invalid url is pulled up
   on my site (such as [http://www.nitallica.org/456789/](http://www.nitallica.org/456789/)),
   it displays a list of my pages. (not recent posts, the PAGES)
 * I don’t think I’ve ever seen this in any of my installs, nor any clients’. It
   is only happening on one of my blogs (www.nitallica.org), and I have not been
   able to reproduce this on any of my other installs.
 * I even tried disabling ALL of my plugins and it was still doing that.
 * Any ideas? Because I’m absolutely stumped.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

 *  Thread Starter [Nicki Faulk](https://wordpress.org/support/users/nitallica/)
 * (@nitallica)
 * [17 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/odd-404-behavior/#post-755867)
 * Addendum: I thought it might be my theme, so I switched to the WP Default theme,
   and it does it there too.
 *  [ed73](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ed73/)
 * (@ed73)
 * [17 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/odd-404-behavior/#post-756118)
 * I’m having exactly the same problem.
 * If you go to Settings / Reading then play with the combination of static page
   selections you’ll see you switch between 404 working but home page not, then 
   vice versa.
 * I currently don’t have any posts, just pages and with static pages set, front
   page is set to ‘home’ and posts page is set to nothing. This means 404 won’t 
   work. When I select ‘home’ in the posts page part of the static page selection
   then 404’s DO work but my home page fails and lists multiple entries.
 * Manually amending the .htaccess file has made no difference either. If someone
   does manage to solve this please post in these forums and help us out.
 * Thanks.
 *  [ed73](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ed73/)
 * (@ed73)
 * [17 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/odd-404-behavior/#post-756119)
 * Try [this thread](http://wordpress.org/support/topic/177130) Nitallica. It solved
   my 404 problem.
 *  Thread Starter [Nicki Faulk](https://wordpress.org/support/users/nitallica/)
 * (@nitallica)
 * [17 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/odd-404-behavior/#post-756120)
 * Unbelievable. Thank you Ed73 for that link. When I set ‘Posts page:’ to a page
   no longer in use, it fixed the problem. (it previously was not set)
 * Odd behavior that one. Will definitely make a note to check my other blogs!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

The topic ‘Odd 404 behavior’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [error pages](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/error-pages/)
 * [pages list](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/pages-list/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 4 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [Nicki Faulk](https://wordpress.org/support/users/nitallica/)
 * Last activity: [17 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/odd-404-behavior/#post-756120)
 * Status: not resolved

## Topics

### Topics with no replies

### Non-support topics

### Resolved topics

### Unresolved topics

### All topics