If you receive an HTTP 404 error it means that the web browser was able to connect to the server, but that the server could not find the web page that has been requested or that it was set up to not respond to the request and give no reason why.When communicating with a server using the HTTP protocol, a server must send back a response to any request that it received. If there is an error on finding the web page requested, this response will consist of a numeric error code and a MIME message. These errors can be modified on a web server so that they provide more useful information to the end user. In Internet Explorer, however, these customized error codes will not be displayed to the visitor unless they are more than 512 bytes unless the web browser’s option to show friendly HTTP error messages has been unchecked.The most common cause of an http 404 error is a web page that has been moved or deleted from a server. If it has been moved, a more useful error code would be a 301 moved permanently error. A server can be set up to display this error code by modifying some configuration files. Because these additional settings have to be inputted into a configuration file, most web servers will just stick to the default error codes.There are countless different types of http 404 error messages that can be found all over the internet. Some pages will use the default http 404 error messages but there are also basic versions that include a search box for the server you are connected to. A more graphically appealing version is also sometimes used on larger web sites.

There are a few steps that you will need to take if you want to create your own custom http 404 error messages. First off, you will need to create or modify a file by the name of .htaccess. If you add the line “ErrorDocument 404 /notfound.html” then the web browser will display your notfound.html file each time an http 404 error is encountered.

Now that you have the web server set up to use the notfound.html file each time an http 404 error is encountered, the sky is the limit. You can write you very own web page code in the html file to display pretty much anything that you like when the error is encountered. There are a few things that are recommended, however, such as a link back to your home page, a search box for your website and any other tools to help the visitor find what they are looking for.

Like all things, once you have set the custom http 404 error the way you would like it, be sure to run your web server through a few tests to make sure that it displays your custom error page the way you intended it to.

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