Custom Error Pages with .htaccess

Ok, we've looked at controlling access to directories with .htaccess, but there are other neat tricks we can do that can add a bit of polish to your site.

One that I've implemented lately is a custom error page. Now, we've all done this, clicked on a link and get a page that says Error 404 page not found. This is the standard code for "it's not here anymore." I noticed at one point I was getting a LOT of 404 errors looking for files that had simply moved, so I did the following.

I created a page that looked like the main theme on the website and named it error.html (I might move it to error404.html soon.) The main contents of the page say the page you tried to access is no longer there it may have been renamed or moved, it gives links to either this site, or the North Carolina Genealogy site which is hosted on the same machine. After 10-15 seconds I've done a redirect to the North Carolina Genealogy site since most of the 404 errors were for pages related to that site.

If you're curious on how to setup a page that refreshes/redirects take a look at Creating a Redirect Page