Link Rot is everywhere on
the Internet. Link rot is the name often used to refer to broken
links on the web, by broken I do of course mean links that don't
work.
When someone is trying to
access a page on your site and either the page has been moved or the
link was misspelled both Internet Explorer and Netscape will display
error pages. If this happens that someone will most likely leave
altogether and you'll never see him or her again.
You can prevent this
happening as a result of broken links and other errors however if
you own your own domain name by setting up what's called custom
error pages. This way when someone try's to access one of your pages
through a broken link they'll be taken to your custom professional
looking 404 error page instead of the basic ''page not
found'' one. If they try to access a page that is forbidden they'll
be taken to your custom professional looking 403 error page instead
of the basic "Access Forbidden" page.
On these custom pages you
could have a link back to your home page so the visitor could go
there and take a look at what your site has to offer.
Custom error pages
are simple normal HTML pages and therefore can be created just as
easily as the other pages on your site, however getting them to show
up is a little more difficult and as mentioned before you must have
your own domain name.
Here's what to do:
First off you need to check out the website directory where your
index.html file is located for a file called .htaccess. Most of the
time you'll find it but sometimes you'll have to create it yourself.
If you have it you should look for code similar to below and change
it to suit your directory. If the below lines of code aren't there
simply add them below everything else. If the .htaccess file isn't
there simply create it and then type in the following lines:
ErrorDocument 400
URL/error400.html
ErrorDocument 401 URL/error401.html
ErrorDocument 403 URL/error403.html
ErrorDocument 404 URL/error404.html
Keep each piece of
ErrorDocument code on one line with a space on each side of the
number 40?. This code is case sensitive so be sure to check the case
of the E and D in ErrorDocument before you proceed.
The code in black stays
the same all the time, the URL is the address of the directory in
which the error page is located and the error40?.html page is the
individual error page itself. The individual page can be called
anything but for convenience sake it's best to go for a descriptive
name like error40?.html
When your done creating a
new file make sure to upload it. If you've edited the current one
make sure to save it, then be sure to use the CHMOD command through
your FTP program or online file manager to set the permissions to
644.
ErrorDocument 404 is the
code associated with link rot which we talked about earlier but
here's a run down.
400 - Bad Request
401 - Unauthorized
403 - Access Forbidden
404 - Page Not Found
Nearly finished now, but
before we are you should test your new error pages by typing in a
URL that you know doesn't exist on your server. You should get your
custom 404 error page (if your 404 error page works all your
error pages should work) ready to bring in the lost visitors that
may be out there
About The Author
Article by David Callan. David is an Internet marketing professional
and webmaster of
. Visit his
webmaster forums for the latest discussions on search engines,
website authoring and Internet marketing related issues and topics. |
Custom
error pages
