General Settings
The General tab on the Settings page controls site-wide behaviour that applies to every 404 the plugin sees. None of these options touches the list of redirects or the log table directly — they shape how requests reach those subsystems in the first place.
The tab is a single Behaviour panel with four toggles. Path exclusions and settings import/export live on the Tools tab.
Behaviour
WordPress URL guessing
Setting key: disable_guessing · Default: Light
WordPress tries to be helpful: when a URL doesn't match any post, it scans your content for the closest matching slug and silently 301-redirects the visitor there. Same code path (redirect_canonical()) also handles trailing-slash, case-folding, and attachment-fallback redirects.
Three modes — pick the level of interference you want from the plugin.
| Mode | What it does |
|---|---|
| Off | Leave WordPress alone. All canonical redirects (closest-post, trailing slash, case fix, attachment fallback) keep firing. |
| Light (default) | Block only the closest-post guess. Trailing-slash, case-fix, and attachment fallback still work. The right default for most sites — 404s become accurate without breaking commonly-relied-on URL canonicalisation. |
| Strict | Bypass redirect_canonical() entirely. Every kind of WordPress URL guessing is off; only literal-match URLs resolve. |
Why this exists
WordPress's guessing makes 404 reporting unreliable. With guessing on, broken links to /about-uss silently land on /about-us and never appear in your logs even though they are mistakes you'd want to fix at the source. Light fixes that without breaking the trailing-slash redirect that most themes quietly rely on. Choose Strict only when you really do want the URL to match literally — typically headless / API-driven sites.
The plugin always honours the ?p=ID shortlink form — direct post-ID links keep working regardless of the mode.
Monitor post slug changes
Setting key: monitor_post_slug · Default: Off
When on, the plugin watches for post/page slug renames and automatically creates a redirect from the old URL to the new one. The created redirect appears in the Redirects list and behaves exactly like a manual entry — you can edit it, disable it, or delete it later.
This is the easiest way to avoid 404s when you rename existing content.
Mask IP addresses
Setting key: mask_ip · Default: Off
Drops the visitor IP before it reaches the database. Logs are still created, but the ip column stays empty. Useful for GDPR-conscious deployments where you want 404 telemetry without the personally identifying data.
The mask happens inside Request::ip(), so any downstream code that reads the IP (custom filters, the email body, exported CSV rows) sees the empty value too — there is no second copy to forget about.
Track admin 404s
Setting key: track_admin_404 · Default: Off
By default the plugin does nothing on wp-admin requests — admin 404s are almost always uninteresting (deleted admin pages, deprecated query parameters, etc.) and they shouldn't pollute the log table or trigger redirects.
Turn this on if you specifically want to log and act on admin-side 404s too. When off, the dispatcher skips any request bound for the admin area — both genuine is_admin() requests and 404s for paths under /wp-admin/ that fall through to the front controller (a missing file under /wp-admin/ is served as a normal front-end 404, where is_admin() would otherwise be false).
Browsers cache 301s
If you change this setting and an admin URL still redirects, clear your browser cache or test in a private window — a 301 returned earlier is cached by the browser and keeps redirecting client-side regardless of the new setting.
Moved to the Tools tab
Exclude paths and Import / Export used to live at the bottom of this tab. They've moved to the new Tools tab so the General tab can stay focused on plugin-wide behaviour toggles.