Error pages, such as “page not found 404” or “forbidden 403” can customized. A customized error page can direct users to browse your site elsewhere. You can also explain user how to report the problem to you instead of the administrator of the whole web server.

© 2005 Tero Karvinen www.iki.fi/karvinen

Create a .htaccess under your home directory (/home/username/) under your web directory (public_html):

# $HOME/public_html/.htaccess
# Customized error pages - http://www.iki.fi/karvinen/error_pages.html
ErrorDocument 404 http://example.com/~myname/error_404.html
ErrorDocument 403 http://example.com/~myname/error_403.html
ErrorDocument 500 http://example.com/~myname/error_500.html

where example.com is your server and myname is your username.

Create a normal, static html page that is shown in the address you chose in .htaccess. For example, “$HOME/public_html/error_404.html”.

• error 404 page not found
• error 403 forbidden
• error 50x server errors: 500 internal server error, 503 service unavailable

• Apache Software Foundation: Custom Error Responses
• Apache Software Foundation: Apache Core Features: ErrorDocument
• IETF: Hypertext Transfer Protocol — HTTP/1.1 (rfc2616)
• W3: Status Code Definitions