Custom error pages


 * Note: For creating custom error pages on Dreamhost, see Creating custom error pages

Ideal Setup
To create custom error pages for your domain, in the .htaccess file located in the root of the server (which you may create if it doesn't exist), add a line like the following:

ErrorDocument 404 /error.php

This will redirct browsers that experience a 404 error (Not Found) to the file "error.php" located on the root of the server. With a little PHP coding you can set up this file to handle all error codes which will make them easier to manage. Alternatively, you can use the above line as an template to create separate custom error pages for each error.

The complete (and very long) list of errors is available here: http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html Some of the most common errors you'll probably want to make entries for are:


 * 400 - Bad Request
 * 401 - Unauthorized
 * 403 - Forbidden
 * 404 - Not Found
 * 500 - Internal Server Error

.htaccess
To catch those errors, you would add the following to .htaccess for the domain you'd like to configure: ErrorDocument 400 /error.php ErrorDocument 401 /error.php ErrorDocument 403 /error.php ErrorDocument 404 /error.php ErrorDocument 500 /error.php

error.php
Then, in error.php, add something like the following. This particular example is made for a wiki site, and if someone goes to  they are redirected to. Anything after the last "/" is assumed to be a wiki article they were trying to get to.

<?php

$page_redirected_from = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']; // this is especially useful with error 404 to indicate the missing page. $server_url = "http://". $_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"]. "/"; $redirect_url = $_SERVER["REDIRECT_URL"]; $redirect_url_array = parse_url($redirect_url); $end_of_path = strrchr($redirect_url_array["path"], "/");

switch(getenv("REDIRECT_STATUS")) {	# "400 - Bad Request" case 400: $error_code = "400 - Bad Request"; $explanation = "The syntax of the URL submitted by your browser could not be understood. Please verify the address and try again."; $redirect_to = ""; break;

# "401 - Unauthorized" case 401: $error_code = "401 - Unauthorized"; $explanation = "This section requires a password or is otherwise protected. If you feel you have reached this page in error, please return to the login page and try again, or contact the webmaster if you continue to have problems."; $redirect_to = ""; break;

# "403 - Forbidden" case 403: $error_code = "403 - Forbidden"; $explanation = "This section requires a password or is otherwise protected. If you feel you have reached this page in error, please return to the login page and try again, or contact the webmaster if you continue to have problems."; $redirect_to = ""; break;

# "404 - Not Found" case 404: $error_code = "404 - Not Found"; $explanation = "The requested resource '". $page_redirected_from. "' could not be found on this server. Please verify the address and try again."; $redirect_to = $server_url. "wiki". $end_of_path; break;

# "500 - Internal Server Error" case 500: $error_code = "500 - Internal Server Error"; $explanation = "The server experienced an unexpected error. Please verify the address and try again."; $redirect_to = ""; break; } ?>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> 

 

'"> 

Page not found: 

Error Code 

The URL you requested was not found. <?PHP echo($explanation); ?>

Did you mean to type ">? You will be automatically redirected there in five seconds.

You may also want to try starting from the home page: ">

A project of "><?php print ($server_url); ?></a>.

Style the page so that it fits with the rest of your site and you're done with basic error handling.

Advanced error.php
This focuses on getting the technical code right, build a nice 404 for any CMS or php powered site with this. This handles most of the errors you are likely to see, in a HTTP Spec compliant way.

Also notice the robots meta tag that tells search engines not to index this page.

<?php // Based on http://www.askapache.com/wordpress/wordpress-404.html $ERROR_CODES = array( '400' => array( 'Bad Request', 'Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.'), '401' => array( 'Authorization Required', 'This server could not verify that you are authorized to '. 'access the document requested. Either you supplied the '. 'wrong credentials (e.g., bad password), or your browser '. 'doesn\'t understand how to supply the credentials required.'), '402' => array( 'Payment Required', 'INTERROR'), '403' => array( 'Forbidden', 'You don\'t have permission to access REQURID on this '. 'server.'), '404' => array( 'Not Found', 'We couldn\'t find that uri'. ' on our server, though it\'s most certainly not '. 'your fault.'), '405' => array( 'Method Not Allowed', 'The requested method THEREQMETH is not allowed for the URL '. 'REQURID.'), '406' => array( 'Not Acceptable', 'An appropriate representation of the requested resource '. 'REQURID could not be found on this server.'), '407' => array( 'Proxy Authentication Required', 'This server could not verify that you are authorized to '. 'access the document requested. Either you supplied the wrong '. 'credentials (e.g., bad password), or your browser doesn\'t '. 'understand how to supply the credentials required.'), '408' => array( 'Request Time-out', 'Server timeout waiting for the HTTP request from the client.'), '409' => array( 'Conflict', 'INTERROR'), '410' => array( 'Gone', 'The requested resourceREQURIDis no longer available on '. 'this server and there is no forwarding address. Please remove '. 'all references to this resource.'), '411' => array( 'Length Required', 'A request of the requested method GET requires a valid '. 'Content-length.'), '412' => array( 'Precondition Failed', 'The precondition on the request for the URL REQURID '. 'evaluated to false.'), '413' => array( 'Request Entity Too Large', 'The requested resource REQURID does not allow request '. 'data with GET requests, or the amount of data provided in the '. 'request exceeds the capacity limit.'), '414' => array( 'Request-URI Too Large', 'The requested URL\'s length exceeds the capacity limit for '. 'this server.'), '415' => array( 'Unsupported Media Type', 'The supplied request data is not in a format acceptable for '. 'processing by this resource.'), '416' => array( 'Requested Range Not Satisfiable', ''), '417' => array( 'Expectation Failed', 'The expectation given in the Expect request-header field could '. 'not be met by this server. The client sent '), '422' => array( 'Unprocessable Entity', 'The server understands the media type of the request entity, but '. 'was unable to process the contained instructions.'), '423' => array( 'Locked', 'The requested resource is currently locked. The lock must be released '. 'or proper identification given before the method can be applied.'), '424' => array( 'Failed Dependency', 'The method could not be performed on the resource because the requested '. 'action depended on another action and that other action failed.'), '425' => array( 'No code', 'INTERROR'), '426' => array( 'Upgrade Required', 'The requested resource can only be retrieved using SSL. The server is '. 'willing to upgrade the current connection to SSL, but your client '. 'doesn\'t support it. Either upgrade your client, or try requesting '. 'the page using https://'), '500' => array( 'Internal Server Error', 'INTERROR'), '501' => array( 'Method Not Implemented', 'GET to REQURID not supported.'), '502' => array( 'Bad Gateway', 'The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server.'), '503' => array( 'Service Temporarily Unavailable', 'The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to '. 'maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.'), '504' => array( 'Gateway Time-out', 'The proxy server did not receive a timely response from the '. 'upstream server.'), '505' => array( 'HTTP Version Not Supported', 'INTERROR'), '506' => array( 'Variant Also Negotiates', 'A variant for the requested resource  '. 'is itself a negotiable resource. This indicates a configuration error.'), '507' => array( 'Insufficient Storage', 'The method could not be performed on the resource because the '. 'server is unable to store the representation needed to successfully '. 'complete the request. There is insufficient free space left in your '. 'storage allocation.'), '510' => array( 'Not Extended', 'A mandatory extension policy in the request is not accepted by the '. 'server for this resource.') );

// prints out the html for the error, taking the status code as input function aa_print_html ($AA_C){ global $AA_REQUEST_METHOD, $AA_REASON_PHRASE, $AA_MESSAGE; if($AA_C == '400'||$AA_C == '403'||$AA_C == '405'||$AA_C[0] == '5'){ @header("Connection: close",1); if($AA_C=='405')@header('Allow: GET,HEAD,POST,OPTIONS,TRACE'); echo "<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN\">\n "; echo " $AA_C $AA_REASON_PHRASE "; echo " $AA_REASON_PHRASE \n $AA_MESSAGE \n \n "; return true; } else return false; }

// Tries to determine the error status code encountered by the server if(isset($_SERVER['REDIRECT_STATUS']) && $_SERVER['REDIRECT_STATUS']!='200') $AA_STATUS_CODE = $_SERVER['REDIRECT_STATUS']; $AA_REQUEST_METHOD = $_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD']; $AA_THE_REQUEST = htmlentities(strip_tags($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'])); $AA_REASON_PHRASE = $ERROR_CODES[$AA_STATUS_CODE][0]; $AA_M_SR=array(array('INTERROR','REQURID','THEREQMETH'), array('The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration '. 'and was unable to complete your request.',$AA_THE_REQUEST,$AA_REQUEST_METHOD)); $AA_MESSAGE=str_replace($AA_M_SR[0],$AA_M_SR[1],$ERROR_CODES[$AA_STATUS_CODE][1]);

// begin the output buffer to send headers and resonse ob_start; @header("HTTP/1.1 $AA_STATUS_CODE $AA_REASON_PHRASE",1); @header("Status: $AA_STATUS_CODE $AA_REASON_PHRASE",1);

if(!aa_print_html($AA_STATUS_CODE)){ ?>	<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en-US" lang="en-US"> <head profile="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11"> Ooops! I Can't find that <meta name="robots" content="noindex" /> <?php _e("$AA_STATUS_CODE $AA_REASON_PHRASE"); ?> <?php } exit; exit; ?>