Custom 404 page gives 200 ok instead of 404 error

[StanHigh]

Hi
I created custom 404 page by following the instructions on:
https://docs.joomla.org/Creating_a_Cust ... Error_Page
everything works perfectly it shows any article I want
But does not give error 404, it gives 200 ok, so goolebot thinks I`ve got endless quantity of pages
What can I do?

[itoctopus]

We were faced with the same problem - since following the guide in your link will mean that no errors will show up in Google's webmaster tools (since no 404 HTTP error will be returned).

We have discussed the solution here: http://www.itoctopus.com/the-right-way- ... -in-joomla . Essentially you should use the "header" PHP function to send the right HTTP header (404) to the browser, you should then get the content of the 404 page using file_get_contents and then display it on the website when the page doesn't exist.