500, 403, 401, 404 Custom Error Pages

Custom error pages are used to prevent people from seing boring error message such as "Permission Denied" or "Page Cannot be Found"? when ever a page is not found on a server or a page is not accessible. It is also used to remove boring server 500 , 404, 401, 403 error messages. You can liven up the error messages by creating custom error pages for each type of error you anticipate your visitors will encounter:

A 404 error message is the standard HTTP standard response code which is returned when the visitor cannot communicate with the server. This is a very common error on the web and it occurs when you are trying to visit a page which has either been deleted or has been moved somewhere else. For example, if you change the structure of your website and move a certain directory to a different part of your site, anyone trying to visit the old page url will get a 404 error message.

When you encounter A 404 error message the server will return page not found and additional information like this : The requested URL /index.php was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request. Apache/2.2.9 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.9 OpenSSL/0.9.7a mod_bwlimited/1.4 PHP/5.2.6 Server at yourwebsite.com Port 80.

This is annoying to a visitor if the cannot see what they are looking for. They will try to see other part of your site to see if the can locate the information. So it is good to create a custom 404 page that will guide the visitor and redirect traffic from incorrect urls. So all you need to do is to create a custom 404 page like this http://www.yoursite.com/404.php which will have information like

So all you need to do is to create a custom 404 page like this http://www.yoursite.com/404.php which will have information like : It appears you are looking for something which isn’t there. Either you have entered an incorrect URL or we have messed up. Why not visit our home page or alternatively, search for what you are looking for in the search box below.

Whilst a 404 error page does not send the visitor to the exact page they want, it does point them in the right direction and it means they are more likely to stay on your site. Once you have your 404 page setup, all you need to do is send visitors to incorrect url’s to this page. To do this just add the following line to your .htaccess file :

ErrorDocument 404 /404.php

401, 403, 500 error messages

We have other errors on the server like 401, 403, 500 error messages etc. each of this error can be handled by creating custom page like this ones below in your htaccess file. Just create this pages on your server and add this line to your htaccess file.

ErrorDocument 401 /admin/authorization.htm

ErrorDocument 403 /password/forbidden.htm

ErrorDocument 500 /password/forbidden.htm

Custom error page is easy to create, to create custom error pages, replace the error code next to ErrorDocument to the appropriate error code, and change the URL of the page that you want the user to see when there is error.

What is a .htaccess File?

Custom Error Pages

IP Blocking

Change Non WWW URLs to WWW URLs

Turning On Compression using GZIP

SEO 301 Redirect

Change the Default Directory Page/index file

How to Stop Directory Listing

How to stop someone looking at your htaccess file

Password Protect a Directory

Control access at files & directory level

Modifying the Environment Variable

Implementing server Caching Scheme with .htaccess

Redirect browser to https (ssl)

Rewrite URLs using htacccess

Adding new MIME types)

Specify Upload file limit for PHP in htaccess

Disallow Script Execution

Change Charset and Language headers

Set Timezone of the Server (GMT)

Force "File Save As" Prompt and File download

Protecting a single file

Set Cookie using htaccess

Send Custom Headers

Blocking request based on User-Agent Header

Disable caching for certain file type

Hotlinking protection with .htaccess

Prevent hacks

Disable directory browsing

Rename .htaccess files to another filename

Change default Index page

Block unwanted visitor based on referring domain

Secure directories by disabling execution of scripts