Can someone explain to me how to do this please...

I've seen on some sites that if I enter a page name wrong, that doesn't exist within a domain where the normal white background error 404 message comes up there is a different document styled by the website makers, and with all the other codes. Does anyone know how to achieve this please...

You can write custom error pages then upload them to your site. Web servers, by default, call certain files when they receive a given error (configurable, of course).

I'm working from memory here, but I think you can simply name the file 404.htm or 404.html.

If your on a Unix server one way to do this is to upload a .htaccess file with the following:

ErrorDocument 404 /custom-error-page.html

that's assuming your host has this feature turned on also on your FTP software you'll need to have Remote File Mask set to -al to view the file once its uploaded.

Apache allows you to define errors like so,
Apache 2 at least anyway.

I cant remember for 1.3 (shocking)

edit the httpd.conf and search for something like below:

#
# Customizable error responses come in three flavors:
# 1) plain text 2) local redirects 3) external redirects
#
# Some examples:
ErrorDocument 500 /error/500.html
ErrorDocument 404 /error/404.html

As you can see this section has three parts to each error response.

ErrorDocument:
Number:
File/ text:

Allways start with ErrorDocument, followed by number which is the error reported I.E 404 and finish with a file or some text.

Then go to the error directory (normally under /var/www/error)
create your 404.html and so on.

Throw in some css and html and you can make pretty error pages.
I assume this will also work the same with apache windows.

Other web server will have something similar just grab your server docs and it will explain it to you.

Ibbo

Originally Posted by Kyrnt

You can write custom error pages then upload them to your site. Web servers, by default, call certain files when they receive a given error (configurable, of course).

I'm working from memory here, but I think you can simply name the file 404.htm or 404.html.

You can and I do.

Ibbo

Ok thanks will try the first idea (naming a 404.htm file) If you have any more ideas please let me know, but I will let you know if that works (most likely some time tomorrow).

Thanks.