How to return a 404 page for a given route?

[henrywright]

I'm using Categories as my home page route so have no need for the example.com/categories page. I thought hey, why not have Nginx return a 404 page when users try to visit /categories:

location /categories {
    return 404;
}

But my bright idea isn't quite working because I get the standard ugly Nginx 404 template:

Does anyone know how I can get the Nodebb 404 template to show instead? For example:

[Kowlin]

There should be A way to make that appear by the nginx config, googling "nginx custom 404 error" might help

[henrywright]

@Kowlin thanks but I don't really want a custom Nginx 404 page. I'd prefer the NodeBB 404 template (2nd screenshot) to be used.

[Kowlin]

@henrywright I'll see if I can somewhat fake it with bootstrap & css

[PitaJ]

You may try redirecting to the /404 route. It might not look like exactly what you want:

location /categories {
  return 301 $scheme://your.site/404;
}

It will give you something like this

If you want it to say /categories not found, you could try redirecting to /categoríes (replacing i with í, i-acute)

[henrywright]

@pitaj neat idea! I'll try that. But I'm also thinking there must be a way of intercepting the request before NodeBB serves the page. Then forcing a NodeBB style 404 (i.e. no redirecting)?

[PitaJ]

@henrywright I think you'd have to do so within NodeBB itself. Also, I don't suggest disabling any routes NodeBB may use, as they are hardcoded and 404ing them could mess stuff up.

[baris]

You can make a plugin and add a handler for /categories and render 404 page.

[henrywright]

@baris I'm going to give that a shot!

[henrywright]

@pitaj I did some testing today with /categories 404'd. Seems as though things continued to work fine. I'm not disabling the functionality, just access to the page.