How to create a custom 404 error web page?

It is important to set up and create a custom error web page to handle 403 error, 404 error, 500 error, or other errors from your web server. If you do not set it up, you will lose your traffic because your web hosting server may direct your traffic to their pages, mostly their ad pages or you may have some webpage plug-in to direct to their pages. The following are the steps to do it:

1. Make sure that your web hosting server has .htaccess enabled.
2. Create a .htaccess file and enter the following text:
 

ErrorDocument 404 /404.html

or you could use a full url

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.edusoftmax.com/404.html

You can also do like this:

ErrorDocument 403 /403.html
ErrorDocument 404 /404.html
ErrorDocument 500 /500.html

Note: To create .htaccess file, first you need to open notepad, and then choose Save As ".htaccess". double quotes should be around ".htaccess".

3. Create a 404.html. If you want to redirect to your home page, you can use the following code:

<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="5; URL=www.edusoftmax.com">

4. Upload .htaccess and 404.html to the root of your web server.

The following is http error codes and explanation:

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Code No.      Explanation
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  100  Continue 
  101  Switching Protocols 
  200  OK 
  201  Created 
  202  Accepted 
  203  Non-Authoritative Information 
  204  No Content 
  205  Reset Content 
  206  Partial Content 
  300  Multiple Choices 
  301  Moved Permanently 
  302  Moved Temporarily 
  303  See Other 
  304  Not Modified 
  305  Use Proxy 
  400  Bad Request 
  401  Unauthorized (directory is password-protected) 
  402  Payment Required 
  403  forbidden 
  404  file not found 
  405  Method Not Allowed 
  406  Not Acceptable 
  407  Proxy Authentication Required 
  408  Request Time-Out 
  409  Conflict 
  410  Gone 
  411  Length Required 
  412  Precondition Failed 
  413  Request Entity Too Large 
  414  Request-URI Too Large 
  415  Unsupported Media Type 
  500  Internal server error (cgi script error) 
  501  Not Implemented 
  502  Bad Gateway 
  503  Service Unavailable 
  504  Gateway Time-Out 
  505  HTTP Version Not Supported
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