404 - Custom Error Pages
From a viewer experience perspective, it's best to have a 404 page for each domain. Besides carrying the site's branding forward for consistency, you can guide the viewer a little with some helpful suggestions and links.
For example, a link to the site index (if there is one) is a good element to include. Especially for sites that change often and the search engines can't keep up. This is probably the #1 cause of 404's - search engine links to pages that have been renamed or moved or deleted.
Customizable error responses come in three flavors:
- Plain Text Message
ErrorDocument 500 "The server made a boo boo.
n.b. the (") marks it as text, it does not get output
- Local Redirects
ErrorDocument 404 /missing.html
to redirect to local url /missing.html
ErrorDocument 404 /cgi-bin/missing_handler.pl
n.b. can redirect to a script or a document using server-side-includes.
ErrorDocument 401 /error/401.html
ErrorDocument 404 /error/404.html
ErrorDocument 403 /error/403.html
- External Redirects
ErrorDocument 402 http://some.other_server.com/subscription_info.html
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