Welcome to 404-error-page.com! This site offers you information on how to create your own 404 error pages, some cool content you can add, and even how you can add links to other sites that aren't what they appear.

tutorial how to create build add your own 404 error page, error 404 page with apache, web server

How to Create Your Own 404 Error Page
Directions for Apache Users

Directions for: Lycos/Tripod

First off, it's not as hard as you think! These directions are for the popular Apache web browser but odds are pretty darn good that's what server you have anyway! if not, then a quick of "adding a 404 error page" coupled with the name of your web server will probably do the trick!

Step One: Modify the httpd.conf file

The first step, and perhaps the most challenging, is to find your Web server configuration file - often called httpd.conf - and find the block of statements that define the location and behavior of your particular site. This file is commonly found at /etc/httpd/httpd.conf, /usr/local/www/conf/httpd.conf or a similar location: if you can't find it, ask your system administrator.

On a typical server configuration, it might look like this:

ServerName www.intuitive.com
ServerAdmin
DocumentRoot /usr/local/www/intuitive.com
ErrorLog logs/intuitive/error_log
TransferLog logs/intuitive/access_log
Your server might have dozens (or more) of these VirtualHost blocks in the configuration file: make sure you find the one for your exact domain name before you make any modifications.

Now that you've found this section, you need to add an ErrorDocument handler that specifies the exact numeric code and the name of the file to serve up (or CGI script to run) when that error is encountered. Here's how that might well look:

ErrorDocument 404 /errordoc-404.shtml
In this case, when error 404 is encountered - page or file not found - then the file errordoc-404.shtml will be served up (and notice that you can have server-side includes (SSI) in error documents if you'd like. One trick, though, is to remember that error pages can pop up anywhere in your site heirarchy, so make sure all your graphic references, links to other areas on the site, etc, are absolute references, that they start with '/' or, in extreme cases, 'http:'.

Note: There's another way you can hook a custom 404 error page into your site too, using a .htaccess file, as explained in How to use .htaccess to create a custom 404 error page.