I discovered this for my forum (via Google webmaster tools), then found that the forum here on BuddyPress.org is doing the same thing.

It seems that the HTTP response has a 404 status code in the header, but the page content is correct (so it renders fine in the browser).

I see this if I submit “http://buddypress.org/forums/” at http://web-sniffer.net/.

I think it is related to deep integration. If I turn off the deep integration, the problem seems to go away.

Anyone else experienced this? Am I missing something fundamental?

ps. I’m on bbPress 1.0.2, WPMU 2.8.4a, BuddyPress 1.0.3.

pps. My forum is throwing googlebot crawl errors and I suspect the same is true for the BuddyPress forums.

[@takuya Participant 15 years, 3 months ago]

1 in 10 or 20 times, this forum generates blank pages when I visit. Something wasn’t happening before.

[@rebootnow Participant 15 years, 3 months ago]

I’ve also seen the blank pages.

Returning to the 404 issue (and cross posting from https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/help-404-error-but-page-displays?replies=3#post-57822), it looks like WordPress is setting the 404 because it doesn’t recognize the bbPress page that is loading.

When the global WP object is constructed, the function WP->handle_404 calls “status_header( 404 )”.

As a workaround, I modified “handle_404” to lay off the 404 if “BB_PATH” is defined (i.e. when a bbPress page is loading). This seems to work ok.

Here’s the new “handle_404” at around line 445 in “wp-includes/classes.php”.

function handle_404() {

global $wp_query;



if ( !defined( 'BB_PATH' ) && (0 == count($wp_query->posts)) && !is_404() && !is_search() && ( $this->did_permalink || (!empty($_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']) && (false === strpos($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], '?'))) ) ) {



// Don't 404 for these queries if they matched an object.

if ( ( is_tag() || is_category() || is_author() ) && $wp_query->get_queried_object() ) {

if ( !is_404() )

status_header( 200 );

return;

}

$wp_query->set_404();

status_header( 404 );

nocache_headers();

} elseif ( !is_404() ) {

status_header( 200 );

}

}

[@rebootnow Participant 15 years, 3 months ago]

This is really a WPMU issue, so I’ve posted it over there: https://mu.wordpress.org/forums/topic/14425?replies=1#post-83354

I think this issue will stop Google (and other search engines) from indexing your forum pages. So if you are using deep integration it might be a good idea to watch for a patch.

Use my little workaround at at your own risk.

[@rebootnow Participant 15 years, 3 months ago]

I got some help on the bbPress forum and think I’ve sorted this out. I was loading “wp-blog-header.php” for deep integration, but loading “wp-load.php” seems to be better. No more 404 headers in the forum, and the RSS feed problem I had previously is also fixed.

I suspect buddypress.org is using “wp-blog-header.php” because it is showing the same symptoms. Perhaps the admin here would like to try “wp-load.php”.

Thread on bbPress forum:

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/deep-integration-google-might-not-be-indexing-your-forum-pages?replies=9#post-57859