Sending 404 status code with error page

[eluser]david_ais[/eluser]
[quote author="Derek Allard" date="1194379211"]Its because everything runs through index.php, so technically it was found. The solution is htaccess.[/quote]

That makes sense. The resource you listed gives some useful background but unfortunately nothing that gets me any further forwards. It did however confirm my fears that this problem will give rise to duplicate content as far as a search engine is concerned.

I'm currently using mod_rewrite to map out the index.php from the URL. So that means pretty much everything gets passed to CI anyway. Which as you say means the CI page is always found. If CI can't then generate a page it spits out the error page. I guess what I was hoping for is the possibility that somehow CI might be able to send a 404 status code along with the error page.

I don't understand how .htaccess helps in this case. Can you explain further how I could use .htaccess in this situation? Alternatively - might a mod to CI be possible to send a different status code? If so can you give me any hints as to how to approach it?

Regards

db