Let’s just say you’re surfing along the web, googling your little heart out until it’s content.

You click from one search result to the next.

All of a sudden you arrive at one search result only to figure click around the website, arriving at an error page that’s quite amusing (see below):

Click here for real experience

Now didn’t that make you smile? And if not, then may reading a few more just like it will.

View 30 Brilliantly Designed 404 Error Pages

Now you may be wondering what this has to do with a 404 error page.

Well, a typical error page looks like the following below.

It’s dull, and not as lively as it could be, especially not as uniquely designed as the aforementioned 404 Error pages.

In addition, it’s more effective experience for both users and search engines when custom 404 error pages.

By now, you’re probably wondering how to create you very own custom error page?

Well, .htaccess is here to the rescue. There are quite a few http response codes that a user could encounter while actively using your website.

I won’t cover them all, but will cover the ones I think are important.

You can review the Mozilla or Apache websites for a full list of response codes with their respective descriptions.

Without further ado, you use the ErrorDocument directive to create custom error code pages.

Below are examples for the various types of custom error pages I account for when using .htaccess.