Don't 404 on empty post type archives

[jfarthing84]

Like the title says, we shouldn't 404 on empty post type archives, just like we don't 404 for empty tag, category, taxonomy or author archives. I have attached a patch.

[markmcwilliams]

I might be wrong, but shouldn't it be if ( ( is_tag() || is_category() || is_tax() || is_author() || is_post_type_archive() ) && $wp_query->get_queried_object() && !is_paged() ) { so that is_post_type_archive() is included within the if statement like the others? :)

[jfarthing84]

Yep, my bad.

[scribu]

Actually, couldn't we only check $wp_query->get_queried_object() && !is_paged() ?

[jfarthing84]

We very well could, since if there is a queried object, it shouldn't be a 404.

[scribu]

check only get_queried_object()

[nacin]

Replying to jfarthing84:

We very well could, since if there is a queried object, it shouldn't be a 404.

Not sure about that -- the conditionals removed in that patch, even when including is_post_type_archive(), is a subset of what's checked in get_queried_object().

[scribu]

So? In which case would we want to send a 404 header that would also have queried_object set?

[ryan]

Punted per bug scrub.

[nacin]

Restoring per bug scrub. Suggest commit on 17316.diff​.

[aaroncampbell]

+1 That seems like the most conservative fix for now.

[johnjamesjacoby]

Tested 17316.diff against bbPress plugin, with and without pretty permalinks, and works great. I think this is the desired result and would love for this to make it into 3.2. A few support topics of bbPress 2.0 beta have come through where an empty topics archive page 404's rather than shows the "No Topics found" feedback, and this alleviates that.

[nacin]

In [18192]:

Don't 404 for empty post type archives. props markmcwilliams, jfarthing84, fixes #17316.

[gazpachu]

The problem is still present:

"../news/archives/2010/09/29" redirects to a 404 Error because there are no posts that day.

[SergeyBiryukov]

Please do not change the version number. It's there to track when the bug was introduced/reported.

[scribu]

I guess the wording wasn't clear. The idea was not to send a 404 HTTP header.

OTOH, sending a 200 HTTP header while loading the 404 template doesn't make much sense.

[nacin]

I don't see a bug here.

If there is one, open a new ticket.