Tag: custom error page

Serving Custom Error Pages From Apache

At work, we are in the process of retiring an old password management web site. We want to direct users to the new site, and I don’t particularly want to handle each possible entry point an individual may have bookmarked. It seemed a lot quicker and easier to just move everything out of the directory and throw up a custom 404 page.

I am certain that I’ve used just “ErrorDocument ### /file.xtn” in Apache configurations to serve custom error pages, but when I set this up in our staging environment … I got the generic 404. Three days of Googling and reading Apache documentation later, and I have a configuration that actually serves a custom page when error 404 is encountered:

        ErrorDocument 404 /customized-404.html
        <Files "customized-404.html">
        <If "-z %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS}">
            RedirectMatch 404 ^/customized-404.html$

Voila, a pretty page that doesn’t in any way indicate 404 / not found / etc but rather says “hey, this web site is being retired. please go over yonder to manage your password.”.