Earlier this morning I mistyped an address inside my forum and received a generic web browser 404 error page:
Generic 404 Error Page.JPG
Yuck! This certainly is not a warm and friendly greeting for a member or new visitor to your site.
While checking for a custom vBulletin enabled 404 error page on vBulletin.org the last attempt I could find was for vBulletin 3.5.
After doing a google search I found a good starting point at the vBSEO forums.
I got to work and used the examples in the
first post to create a custom_404 template and a 404.php file on my web server.
Generic 404 Template and File.JPG
I did not feel right doing a copy/paste to my own example, please copy/paste from
first post.
I am not a vBSEO customer so I needed to add an apache directive to the VirtualHost section of my httpd.conf for my web site:
Quote:
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ErrorDocument 404 /404.php
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When testing my work I realized that I did not like the error message provided in the example above, and recalled recently seeing code at the
Google Webmaster Tools web site for an enhanced 404 error page. If you do not have an account already, create an account, enter your site, and then you can click on
Tools followed by
Enhance 404 Pages to get code personalized for your forums.
Generic 404 Enhance 404 Pages.JPG
Replace the following line with the google enhanced 404 page code:
Quote:
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You can try a <a href="/search.php">search</a> if you are looking for something specific.
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The result is a great looking custom 404 error page that includes a google powered search for your forums!
Demo
-Raymond
Linear Mode
