A cool trick you can entice your visitors with is custom error pages. When a page on your server is not found, your visitors will normally see their browser's default message such as "Page cannot be displayed." If you used a custom error page though, your visitors will see your page.

404 Error pages will ONLY work if you are using it on a domain. Sub-domains (something.your-site.com or http://www.your-site.com/something) will NOT work.

Here's How:
1. Create an HTML file for your 404 page. It could be anything you would like. It could be just simply 404 on a blank page.. or it could be your layout that includes the 404 words in it.. it's all up to you.
2. Save that file in any file format you want (html, php etc;) and upload it to your webserver. You can either keep it in your main or root directory, or you can create a subfolder. If you're only going to be using one (404) then I suggest just leaving it in your root folder.
3. Press start > Run > type "notepad" (in mac, just open a text editor) now you will take this code below, and put it into your text editor:

4. Remember, change the URL in the above code to the path of your 404 page on your server.
5. Now file > save as > htaccess.txt | save it somewhere that you will remember.
6. Upload the HTACCESS.TXT folder to your webserver. (Make sure it's in the home or root directory)
7. Rename the file (will be different for different ftp clients) to .HTACCESS (make sure there is a "." before HTACCESS and NO ".txt" after HTACCESS)
8. And there you go! You should be good to go. There are also other error pages available such as internal error, forbidden etc; search google for these .. and then its just a matter of adding that code to your .htaccess file and making another error document (like your 404 page).

Any questions?

Jacob.

Nice tutorial, but I have a problem.

I know you said I can't create error pages with sub domains...

Then how come I found a website that can do it with sub domains:
http://kingsnetwork.myvnc.com/

So if you typed http://kingsnetwork.myvnc.com/blahblah8y4235234

It comes with an customised error page.

And I can't! =[

Please help.

Thanks.

i was going todo a tutorial on this

wow thats a lot simpler than I thought.

Thanks for the info! (tutorial)

Simple, simple, simple!

so, this wont work on zymic? or will it ??

This will work on zymic servers.

swordz

So instead of getting a generic 404, you can have it jazzed up and to the theme of your site!

Jacob.

is there anyway that this could be setup so if say vndv was down i could host it on another server and it would say please go here.

if vndv is down your site can't be accessed. the page will just expire...so no.

Great Tutorial

Keep Providing more..

I know nothing of Html, Php, Mysql, and I'm new to Zymic, but I do know logic.
So, couldn't you add a seperate Htaccess File for your subdomain?

you can also create a page for "when the server is too busy" but it's a different number, and I don't remember which one it is.

500.13. A full list is here. And there's far more than I thought there were...

swordz

Nice tutorial. It looks pretty simple. I'll give it try.

Hiya - great tutorial -I always wondered how it was done - so it's time to play around some more!!
Thanks
Stu

Does anyone have the code to do a small shoutbox that will fit into a sidebar just so people can leave comments on the site
cheers
Stu

ty

I never really had to create so many error pages. I just set my servers language to Chinese for fun. It was great.

You can also try htaccess editor (www.htaccesseditor.com/en.shtml)
easy..