That is exactly what I

greg — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 03:24:54 +0000

That is exactly what I do.

But previously I had it so the htaccess directives went to the redirect_error.php file, which that file then used the PHP exit(header) code to send it to error.php.
I did this as it reset any bad filenames or directories in the users address bar as they had new headers to an exact file location.

As Google analytics complained about the 403 being a 200 response and it wouldn't accept the analytic file until I rectified this issue, I had to change the htaccess directives to go straight to the error.php file and not the one that instigated the header redirect.

As such, you can type a non-existent directory in the address bar, and although the error page is loaded successfully from the htaccess directive, it doesn't change the URL. So domain.com/non-existent_dir/ remains as it is. And for directories password protected through plesk, the pop up login prompt keeps popping up for as the address bar remains the same and not redirected.

I.E. URL is still the password protected dir, and is now refreshed due to the error.php file being loaded and so the login pops up again due to reload.

is there a reason why you

Greg K — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 02:46:11 +0000

is there a reason why you cannot just use the .htaccess directives:

ErrorDocument 404 /error.php
ErrorDocument 403 /error.php

In the error.php, are you feeding out a header to indicate the page is actually a 404?

-Greg