Htaccess: Site error documents

.htaccess - Apache directory-level configuration file

Site error documents

Apache provides some bland error documents, but you are not restricted to using just these. You can provide your own and match them to your site's look.

What errors produce what

The following is a list of the Apache error numbers and what they relate to:

Successful Client Requests	Client Request Errors	Server Errors
201 Created	400 Bad Request	500 Internal Server Error
202 Accepted	401 Authorization Required	501 Not Implemented
203 Non-Authoritative Information	403 Forbidden	502 Bad Gateway
204 No Content	404 Not Found	503 Service Unavailable
205 Reset Content	405 Method Not Allowed	504 Gateway Timeout
206 Partial Content	406 Not Acceptable (encoding)	505 HTTP Version Not Supported
Client Request Redirected	407 Proxy Authentication Required
300 Multiple Choices	408 Request Timed Out
301 Moved Permanently	409 Conflicting Request
302 Moved Temporarily	410 Gone
303 See Other	411 Content Length Required
304 Not Modified	412 Precondition Failed
305 Use Proxy	413 Request Entity Too Long
	414 Request URI Too Long
	415 Unsupported Media Type

Note: There is no need to create error pages for all the above. The following are worth considering: 401, 403, 404 and 500

How to create customised error documents

Create a new Directory in your root directory (www) and name it errors. This will contain all the custom error pages you wish to display. For example, not_found.html will be displayed when a page cannot be found on your web site.

Now open the root .htaccess file (the one in your root directory www) and add the following line:

ErrorDocument 404 /errors/not_found.html

Save the file. The command ErrorDocument 404 will forward a user to the <root>/errors/not_found.html file when ever Apache produces the error 404.

Note 1: The files and directory can be named anything you like.
Note 2: You can use a full URL (as oppose to a virtual path) to your error file; for example: http://yoursite.com/errors/not_found.html

If you create error pages for the above, your .htaccess file will look similar to this when using virtual paths:

ErrorDocument 401 /errors/auth_required.html
ErrorDocument 403 /errors/forbidden.html
ErrorDocument 404 /errors/not_found.html
ErrorDocument 500 /errors/server_error.html

Or look like similar to this if when using full URL paths:

ErrorDocument 401 http://yoursite.com/errors/auth_required.html
ErrorDocument 403 http://yoursite.com/errors/forbidden.html
ErrorDocument 404 http://yoursite.com/errors/not_found.html
ErrorDocument 500 http://yoursite.com/errors/server_error.html

Example

The following shows a little more detail. First create the error page to be displayed:

Comment	Code
Create a new directory in www named errors. In this directory create a file named not_found.html Add the code shown on the right. Save the file.	<html> <title>Not found</title> <body> <p>Example of a <b>not found</b> page</p> </body> </html>

Add the command to htaccess:

Comment

Code

Navigate to the root directory www.
Open the .htaccess file.
Add the command shown on the right last line.
Save the file.

# This file provides security for the server, limiting access to the localhost only.
# Comment to deactivate.

Order Deny,Allow
Deny from all
Allow from 127.0.0.1
Allow from ::1

# To allow execution of cgi scripts in this directory, uncomment the next two lines. 

AddHandler cgi-script .pl .cgi
Options +ExecCGI

# To unlock your server, comment the next 4 lines.
# Defaults: Username = admin; Password = userver

#AuthName "Uniform Server - Secure Server Access"
#AuthType Basic
#AuthUserFile /htpasswd/www/.htpasswd
#Require valid-user

ErrorDocument 404 /errors/not_found.html

Testing

(Re)start the server.
In the browser address bar, type http:/localhost/fred.html or some other file that does not exist.
Apache will generate the error code 404 and redirect to your not_found.html page

Experiment with the ErrorDocument command and create a few other pages.