Tweet
There may be other ways of doing this, this may have already been discussed, but for those of you out there who are interested in my way here is a great way to make a far more impressive and practical 404 error page.
When someone types an error on your domain address or maybe clicks on a redundant link that is still on the seacrh engine, they usually get taken to a very informal blank white page that says something like:
404 Error. The requested page cannot be found.
Pretty useless for your potential visitors as they will now bugger off elsewhere!
Here however, is what happens when they click on one of my client's sites on a url that doesn't exist...
(click to see what happens)
This is a much better page for your client to land on than the usual 404 error page.
How to make:
Create your own 404 page by using one of your site pages as the template. In my example above, the error page is basically an exact duplicate of the home page. I have just ammended the top lines to read as it does. You can create a page as you like though.
I named this page custom_page but again, name it what you like and publish it.
Go into your CP and then File Manager.
Look for a file called .htaccess
Open this file up to edit.
If it is blank just add this exactly as it is below and on one line.
ErrorDocument 404 /custom_page.html
It's also a good idea to add the code <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> to the <head> section of your 404 page, so that search engine robots don't add it to their indexes.
(If you named your page anything else but custom_page then just change that in the link above)
save it.
Now see if it works....
When someone types an error on your domain address or maybe clicks on a redundant link that is still on the seacrh engine, they usually get taken to a very informal blank white page that says something like:
404 Error. The requested page cannot be found.
Pretty useless for your potential visitors as they will now bugger off elsewhere!
Here however, is what happens when they click on one of my client's sites on a url that doesn't exist...
(click to see what happens)
This is a much better page for your client to land on than the usual 404 error page.
How to make:
Create your own 404 page by using one of your site pages as the template. In my example above, the error page is basically an exact duplicate of the home page. I have just ammended the top lines to read as it does. You can create a page as you like though.
I named this page custom_page but again, name it what you like and publish it.
Go into your CP and then File Manager.
Look for a file called .htaccess
Open this file up to edit.
If it is blank just add this exactly as it is below and on one line.
ErrorDocument 404 /custom_page.html
It's also a good idea to add the code <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> to the <head> section of your 404 page, so that search engine robots don't add it to their indexes.
(If you named your page anything else but custom_page then just change that in the link above)
save it.
Now see if it works....
Comment