| As a web publisher, you can
create your own error documents, such as a custom 404
pages, on Brown's server. There are three different
ways to do this, the text display, the URL redirect,
and the local redirect.
Whichever of these three methods
you choose, you will have to first create an .htaccess
file (or edit an .htaccess file you already have).
An .htaccess file is simply a plain text file that
you create, name .htaccess and put in the uppermost
directory you wish to effect. That directory, and
every directory below it, will use the custom errors
you define.
**Note: To see your custom error
page in IE, you may need to change a setting. To make
this change in IE, click Tools > Internet Options
> Advanced and under the Browsing heading, uncheck
"Show Friendly HTTP Error Messages". Click
OK to exit.
In all three cases, the syntax
you use in your .htaccess file will look like this
ErrorDocument three-digit-code
action
Text display
The first way to customize your error page is to simply
change the text that appears on the standard web page.
Choose the error page you wish to change (a list is
available at the end of this document), and find its
three-digit code. Then add a line to your .htaccess
file which says
ErrorDocument 404 "Sorry,
but the page you're looking for is not here."
The text, which you must place
within quotation marks, will appear on the page when
a user gets a 404 page not found error when looking
for something in one of your directories.
URL redirect
A URL redirect will cause the user to be forwarded
to a URL you specify when they get a particular error.
For example, you can add a line such as this to your
.htaccess file
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.mydomain.edu/looking4something/404.html
and instead of displaying a standard
text message when a user tries to reach a page that
doesn't exist, the server will redirect the user to
the URL you specified in the line above. Note that
the URL is not in quotation marks (only the text for
the text display needs to be in quotation marks.
Local
redirect
A local redirect works just like a URL redirect, except
instead of putting a URL in the .htaccess file, you'll
put a path to a file on your server, like this:
ErrorDocument 404 /looking4something/404.html
Some commonly used error
codes
400 Bad Request
401 Authorization Required
403 Forbidden
404 Not Found
408 Request Timed Out
500 Internal Server Error
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