HTTP 404 — Not Found

The requested URL doesn’t exist on the server — a broken link, a moved page, or a missing rewrite rule.

Last reviewed 2026-08-29 by the Tech Issue Guide team.

Symptoms

• “404 — Page Not Found” for a link that used to work.
• Only certain pages 404 while the home page loads.
• After a site migration, most internal links 404.

What causes 404 Not Found

• The URL is mistyped or the page was renamed or deleted.
• The page moved and no redirect was created.
• The web server’s routing or rewrite rules do not resolve the path (missing mod_rewrite, wrong try_files, broken framework router).
• Case sensitivity on Linux servers (About.html ≠ about.html).

How to fix it — 3 steps

1. Double-check the spelling and letter case of the URL; navigate to the page from the site’s home page or search instead.
2. If you own the site, add a 301 redirect from the old path to the new location.
3. Confirm the rewrite/routing configuration — mod_rewrite enabled, Nginx try_files correct, or the framework router registered for that path.

Terminal / CLI command

curl -o /dev/null -s -w "%{http_code}\n" "https://example.com/missing"

Confirms the status code from outside the browser and rules out browser cache.

Prevent it from coming back

Keep a redirect map when restructuring URLs, and run a link checker after deploys.

Frequently asked questions

Related error codes