Custom error pages are a great way to retain wayward visitors who may have followed a link to a page on your site that doesn't exist, has been renamed or as a result of other errors.

  

Standard error messages provide very little information and in many circumstances, the person will click away and go elsewhere - which could mean a lost subscriber, lead or sale. Instead of this happening, you can have something like this (click the link for a demonstration):

http://www.domainregistration.com.au/errorexample.htm

That page doesn't actually exist on the Domain Registration Services site - it's what is called a "custom 404 error page".

This feature is very easy to implement! Here's how to do it:

1. Support for custom error messages should already be switched on in your account control panel. Check that it is by logging in, clicking on "Home" in the left hand menu and selecting "Setup".
2. Scroll down to the Custom Error Documents option and ensure the check box is ticked. If not, tick it and click OK
3. Connect to your hosting account via FTP and navigate to the error_docs directory, which is one level about the httpdocs folder
4. Edit or replace the respective files and ensure you preserve the correct file names. You'll see quite a few files in there, but the most important one to customize is the "not_found.html" file. This is the page generated when there is a "404 not found" error.

We suggest using your site template as the custom 404 error page, along with relevant body text such as "The page you requested cannot be found, here are some other popular pages on our web site".. and follow that with some helpful links.

That's all there is to it - once uploaded, your new custom 404 error message will start working immediately!

If you're curious as to what the other custom error files in the error_docs directory represent, here's a list:

• 400 Bad File Request - bad_request.html
• 401 Unauthorized - unauthorized.html
• 403 Forbidden/Access denied - forbidden.html
• 404 Not Found - not_found.html
• 405 Method Not Allowed - method_not_allowed.html
• 406 Not Acceptable - not_acceptable.html
• 407 Proxy Authentication Required - proxy_authentication_required.html
• 412 Precondition Failed - precondition_failed.html
• 414 Request-URI Too Long - request-uri_too_long.html
• 415 Unsupported Media Type - unsupported_media_type.html
• 500 Internal Server Error - internal_server_error.html
• 501 Not Implemented - not_implemented.html
• 502 Bad Gateway - bad_gateway.html

Custom error pages are just one of many features Domain Registration Services offers with its web hosting plans to help make your online business more productive and profitable! Join us and find out why thousands of Australian and international businesses not only trust their domain name registration with us, but their web hosting too!