Wordpress notices when a page doesn't exist or the database is down and
returns a human-readable error. However, the HTTP status code for these
pages remains 200. This means the page looks like a "real" page to
monitoring systems and programs like wget.
This bug is to request a change to the themes/default/404.php file and wp-includes/wp-db.php
file. Basically wordpress should call the php header() function to set the return
header when there is an error.
Here are the diffs that will accomplish this:
Index: wp-includes/wp-db.php
===================================================================
--- wp-includes/wp-db.php (revision 420)
+++ wp-includes/wp-db.php (working copy)
@@ -42,6 +42,7 @@
function wpdb($dbuser, $dbpassword, $dbname, $dbhost) {
$this->dbh = @mysql_connect($dbhost, $dbuser, $dbpassword);
if (!$this->dbh) {
+ header('HTTP/1.0 500 Database Not Available');
$this->bail("
<h1>Error establishing a database connection</h1>
<p>This either means that the username and password information in your <code>wp-config.php</code> file is incorrect or we can't contact the database server at <code>$dbhost</code>. This could mean your host's database server is down.</p>
Index: wp-content/themes/default/404.php
===================================================================
--- wp-content/themes/default/404.php (revision 420)
+++ wp-content/themes/default/404.php (working copy)
@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
+<?php header('HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found'); ?>
<?php get_header(); ?>
<div id="content" class="narrowcolumn">
