Customized Missing Document Page

When a visitor to your site tries to access a page that does not exist, they will usually receive Apache's default Error 404: File Not Found message.  If you prefer you can set up your account so that your own customized message is displayed, perhaps with a link to your home page or some helpful message.

Using the Control Panel

Simply log into your Control Panel, click on "Error Pages" and then "404" and paste the HTML of your page into the form.

From this point on, when any tries to access a page on your website that doesn't exist, they will receive your custom error message.

Using a Text Editor For Increased Customization

Create a file named .htaccess in your public_html directory and place the following in it:

ErrorDocument 404 your_404_page_name_here.htm

This method will allow you to define any type of file to serve as an error document, not just HTML (ie CGI, PHP, or even graphics). You can also put a different .htaccess in each directory and have different pages for each one.

For example, you could define an image as your 404 "page" in your images folder, then if an image is missing a "nicer" message is shown instead of the usual broken image icon.  The secret it out!

From this point on, when any tries to access a page on your website that doesn't exist, they will receive your custom error message.