Htaccess: Site error documents
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.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 folder in your root folder (www) and name it errors. This folder 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 folder 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 folder>/errors/not_found.html file when ever Apache produces the error 404.
Note 1: The files and folder 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 |
|---|---|
|
<html>
<title>Not found</title>
<body>
<p>Example of a <b>not found</b> page</p>
</body>
</html>
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Add the command to htaccess:
| Comment | Code |
|---|---|
|
# 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.