Serve your 404 page as static in Drupal

In the standard Drupal configuration, it tries to absorb all the traffic generated against the directory (and subdirectories) where it is installed on the server; this also includes 404 errors.

Any request for a file that does not exist will be handled by Drupal. This isn’t usually a problem since, in theory, most 404 errors are due to typos in URLs by users. However, on a high-traffic site that has just been redesigned and where redirects from old paths to new ones haven’t been correctly created, we might find ourselves serving many 404 pages.

Unfortunately, if we are using Boost, it does not cache 404 pages. Therefore, Drupal has to execute a “full process” to return the page (remember that if we are using Boost, we cannot use Drupal’s internal caching). As minor as this may seem, it represents a wasteful use of server resources.

The Static 404 module puts an end to this problem. Once installed, navigate to Configuration > System > Site information and in the Error pages section, click the Generate static 404 Page button. From that moment on, Drupal will return a static page for any 404 error. Although it might seem like a triviality, we have performed stress tests on our local server and reduced response time by 80%, which makes a difference on high-traffic websites and allows us to dedicate those freed-up resources to what really matters.