How To Create a "Custom 404 Not Found" page

When we make a new website, you couldnt care less about keeping track of broken
links, missing pages etc. But as it grows, some pages are moved to new addresses,
some are deleted. People might still com to these pages from the search engines or
other links, but on arrival all they would see is this:

Error 404 - File Not Found

By the time a website becomes old, you will realize you might start losing visitors
The solution is : A custom 404 page!

Now, if someone comes to a webpage on my site that doesn't exist anymore, they will
see a special webpage that will direct them to wherever they want to go.

Follow these directions:


1. Open Notepad and type in this line:

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.yoursite.com/custom_page.html

Be sure to change the URL to your own custom "File Not Found" page.
Keep it all on one line, with a space before and after 404.

2. Save this file as ".htaccess" and upload it to your web server into the root directory


3. Use an FTP or telnet program to set the permissions to CHMOD 644.

There may be a case when you already have a file on your server called ".htaccess". In
that case you can simply add the line in step 1 after everything else in that file.
I found that my web sites get at least 20% of their traffic from that page.
Well, that really helps, doesnt it ?