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1. What is a custom error page?
A custom error page is an error page you can make to
look like it "belongs" to your web site. If
a visitor to your web site types in the wrong URL (address),
or enters the incorrect information, you can have nice
looking error pages that can redirect them to another
part of your website instead having a visitor leave your
site discouraged.
With a custom 404 page, you can add your logo to the page and also
redirect them back to the home page. For more information about 404 pages,
please click here
2. What kind of error pages can
I create?
- 400 Bad request -- This means that a request
for a URL has been made but the server is not configured
or capable of responding to it. This might be the case
for URLs that are handed-off to a servlet engine where
no default document or servlet is configured, or the HTTP
request method is not implemented.)
- 401 Authorization Required -- "Authorization
is required to view this page. You have not provided valid
username/password information." This means that the
required username and/or password was not properly entered
to access a password protected page or area of the web site space.
- 403 Forbidden -- "You are not allowed to
access this page." (This error refers to pages that
the server is finding, ie. they do exist, but the permissions
on the file are not sufficient to allow the webserver
to "serve" the page to any end user with or
without a password. If you want this page to be viewable
by the user you must change permissions on the file.)
- 404 Page Not Found -- "The requested URL
could not be found on this site." Probably the most
common error message, this means the page as it was entered
in the URL does not exist on the server. This is usually
caused by someone incorrectly typing the URL, or by the
web master renaming or moving an existing page to a different
directory. (Old links may continue to show up in Search
Engines for months, and if pages have been deleted or
moved, any attempts to access the old links will result
in a 404 Page Not Found error unless you have a redirect
set up from the old page to the new page.)
- 500 Internal Server Error -- "The server
encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and
was unable to complete your request. Please contact the
server administrator and inform them of the time the error
occurred, and anything you might have done to produce
this error." (By the way this error is usually caused
by a misconfiguration in a script, so if you get this
you will should look at your error
logs in your hosting account cPanel to find out the
cause.)
3. How can I make my own "error
pages"?
Create an html or shtml page that looks like and says
what you want it to. Click "Error Pages
" icon. The process is almost step-by-step
and "almost" self-explanatory. Click on whichever
error page you want to customize. It will take you to
a big text box, copy the entire HTML code of the custom
error page you created and paste it all into the text
box, then click "Save". There are a few tricks
to success however:
- Make sure that everything in your page code uses the
entire url, including image sources. If you're using
stylesheets or JavaScripts, make sure that they also
use the entire url in the call:
<img src="http://yourdomain.com/images/imagename.jpg">
instead of simply
<img src="images/imagename.jpg">, and
<script language="JavaScript" src="http://yourdomain.com/scriptdirectory/javascriptname.js"></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://yourdomain.com/stylesheetname.css"
type="text/css">
and so on. Or you could simply put your styles right
into the body of the page, ditto with the JS unless
it's one that must be placed between <head> and
</head> tags.
- The code for the Error page must be at least 10Kb
or it won't display properly in Internet Explorer. It's
just one of IE's quirks. An easy workaround if you don't
want your error page to ramble on & on is to simply
put a bunch of other "stuff" within comment
tags somewhere in your page. That way it won't show
up when displayed in a browser. Comment tags are <!--
and -->, with the <!-- placed before your comments
and --> placed after. Anything you have between these
two tags will not be displayed in a browser. Example:
<!-- This is a bunch of extra stuff I have to write
in order to make the code of this page large enough
for the custom error page to show up in Internet Explorer.
Thanks Bill Gates!! blah blah blah blah and on and on
until the page is long enough :-s -->
- In your cPanel when you select the Error Page you
want to edit, you will find above the edit text box
several buttons:
- Referring URL
- Visitor's IP address
- Requested URL
- Server Name
- User's Browser
- Status Code
These are things you can insert into the code of
your page to customize it even further. For example
if you choose "Requested URL", it will give
you code to insert into your page so that the URL
requested by the visitor is displayed on the page.
To the left of these buttons is another button that
says "Click to Insert". Now this is a little
misleading. When you click to insert, it will NOT
insert anything where you have your curser. I wish
it did but it won't; it's a cPanel
quirk. It will instead insert the code just after
or just before any code you have entered in the text
box. The "inserted" bit of code will look
something like this: <!--#echo var="REQUEST_URI"
--> although the "REQUEST_URI" may be
replaced by something else depending on what you selected.
Look for it at the very beginning or very end of your
pasted code and then cut/paste it into the proper
spot in your html code.
- Make your custom error page/s interesting and helpful.
Give visitors information they can use to navigate your
site: Links, a menu, email address for help or support,
etc. A bit of humor can be fun too, if it fits in with
your site, by taking some of the edge off people's frustration
when they get an error page.
- And of course it would be best to coordinate your
error page/s with your site, at least to some extent.
As always, if you need any help at all, feel free to email us at support@canadianwebhosting.com or use the PHP Live button on the left.
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