Archived:Creating a Custom 404 Error

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This tutorial will show you how to create a custom 404 Error Page for use in your Joomla 1.5 Web Site.

Four Steps to Creating a Custom 404 Error Page

1. Create an Uncategorized '404' Article

   Create an 'uncategorized' article in Joomla! to serve as your 404 Page. Include some text such as Sorry, we could not find the page you were looking for... and if necessary, also any useful navigational links. For example, you may wish to add a link back to your site's home page.

2. Create and copy a link to that new 404 Article.

   Create a menu item which links to the new 404 Article and 'apply' your changes. Then copy the URL information (index.php?optio...), set the menu item as 'unpublished' and close out of the menu editing page. You may want to paste the copied URL into Notepad or somewhere accessible for the time-being.

3. Copy error.php to your Template's Directory

   In your Joomla! installation copy the file error.php from the templates/system directory, to your Template directory. For example, if I was using a template named 'Cleancloud' I would copy the error.php file to the templates/cleancloud directory.

4. Modify error.php to Redirect 404 Errors to your 404 Article

   Edit the error.php file as follows, adding the code below immediately under the 'restricted access' line:

if (($this->error->code) == '404') {
header('Location: /index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=75');
exit;
}

If you are using Joomla 1.6/1.7, use this detection code instead:

if (($this->error->getCode()) == '404') {

Replace the location information (index.php?option..) with the URL from the menu item you created.

Additional Steps toward a Better Custom 404 Error Page

• Add the following line to the robots.txt file located in the root directory of your Joomla! installation.

  Disallow: /index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=75

• Replacing the (index.php?option..) location with your 404 Article URL.
• Follow the Best-Practices described here: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/perfect404/
• Be creative, add a 404 Haiku or maybe an Interesting Photo
• For Joomla 2.5, instruction on how to create 404 Error page can be found on iTropics.net

More Custom Error Page Information

• Custom Error Pages
• System Error Pages
• HTTP/1.1 Status Code Definitions
• Google Webmaster - Analyzing Crawl Errors