404 Error Page Does Not Always Display Properly

[slobjones]

I'm having an unusual problem with my 404 error page, which doesn't always appear in its proper form.

 

cPanel saves my 404 page in my root folder as 404.shtml. The thing works fine as long as the visitor mistypes a page name, in the form of mysite.com/wrongpage.php or something similar.

 

The problem occurs when the address is improperly named in the form of a folder, as in mysite.com/wrongpage/.

 

What happens then is my 404 page appears, but without the benefit of my style sheet. There appears to be a path problem that manifests itself only in this instance, that prevents the page from finding index.css.

 

Any idea on how to fix this problem?

[TCH-Bruce]

Well the first thing to check is make sure your 404 page is referencing the css file correctly. Put a full url to the css in the 404 page.

 

Second, make sure your 404 page is more than 512 bytes.

 

Third, make sure your .htaccess file contains

>ErrorDocument 404 http://yourdomain.ext/404.shtml

 

Personally I would rename the file 404.php, but that's just me. Be sure to change the .htaccess to reflect a page name change.

 

Check out some of these:

The Perfect 404

A Custom 404 Page

Fun Spoof Custom 404 Error Pages

[Jeter2Fan93]

Third, make sure your .htaccess file contains

>ErrorDocument 404 http://yourdomain.ext/404.shtml

 

I didn't know that! Learned something new today