Redirect Settings
The Redirects tab on the Settings page configures the global fallback redirect — what happens when a 404 fires for a URL that has no matching custom redirect on the Redirects page.
Custom redirects always win. These settings only apply when none match.
Enable redirect
Setting key: redirect_enabled · Default: On
The master switch for the global fallback.
- On — every unmatched 404 is redirected to the destination configured below using the configured HTTP status.
- Off — unmatched 404s render WordPress's normal 404 template. Custom per-URL redirects from the Redirects page still fire as usual.
A site that turns this off effectively says: "only redirect URLs I have explicitly listed; everything else gets the theme's 404 page."
Redirect type
Setting key: redirect_type · Default: 301
The HTTP status code returned with the fallback redirect.
| Code | Name | When to use |
|---|---|---|
| 301 | Moved Permanently | The right answer for SEO — search engines drop the old URL and start indexing the destination instead. Browsers cache aggressively. |
| 302 | Found | A temporary move. Search engines keep the old URL indexed. Caches don't hold the redirect for long. |
| 307 | Temporary Redirect | Like 302 but the HTTP method is preserved (a POST stays a POST). Rarely needed for 404 → page redirects. |
301 is the default and is almost always what you want for a 404 fallback — the page genuinely doesn't exist, so telling clients to forget about it is the honest signal.
Redirect to
Setting key: redirect_target · Default: link
Where unmatched 404s land. Three options:
A custom URL (link)
The default. Pick an external or internal absolute URL to send 404 traffic to. The destination is configured in the Destination URL field that appears when this option is selected.
Setting key for the URL: redirect_link · Default: the site's home URL.
The value must be an absolute URL including the scheme (https://…). It is sanitised through esc_url_raw() before save.
The destination may point off-site — the plugin redirects with wp_redirect() rather than wp_safe_redirect(), so external targets like https://example.com/landing work as configured. (Destinations are admin- controlled, so the host-restriction wp_safe_redirect() enforces isn't needed; you can re-enable it with the 404_to_301_use_safe_redirect filter.)
An existing page (page)
Redirect to the permalink of a page by ID. The numeric ID is entered in the Destination page ID field.
Setting key for the page ID: redirect_page · Default: 0
Use this when you maintain a dedicated "page not found" landing page inside WordPress — it survives slug renames automatically because the redirect resolves the permalink each time, not the saved URL.
No redirect (none)
Skip the fallback entirely even when the master switch is on. Equivalent to turning redirect_enabled off, but kept as a distinct option so the rest of the redirect configuration (type, link, page) is preserved while you temporarily disable the fallback.
Per-URL redirects always run first
None of these settings affects the Redirects page. A custom redirect matching the request URL fires regardless of whether the global fallback is on, off, or configured to do nothing. See the Redirects page docs for managing those.