Joomla Templates

The 404 error page without Joomla

When visitor try to reach page that doesn't exist on your site, he/she will see the "page not found" error page. This page is known as 404 page. What visitor will see, depends of browser he/she is using. The page is not user-friendly, and what's more important for you, the visitor will probably leave your site after experiencing such error. Here's how such error page looks in Firefox 3 with Google Toolbar installed.

The 404 error page with Joomla

Joomla installed on your server will change default browser's 404 page to something what you can see on this picture. It's not perfect, but still better than default browser error page. At least, there's a link that leads to the home page of your web site. Not bad, but could be much better.

Why is 404 page important? Why we are talking about it at all?

Look at the statistics of your web site if you can. You would be surprised how much hits had 404 error response code, even if all links on your web site are correct. So, where they come from:

• Out of date bookmarks in visitors' browsers
• Search engines didn't update their listings for your web site yet
• Visitor mistype address when entering it directly in browser
• Web sites that link to your site have wrong or out of date links
• Many other reasons, but above 4 are enough for you to get many 404 error response codes

What the 404 page should do?

• Make visitors feel comfortable, even if they are on the 404 error page
• Keep visitors on your web site by referring them to the other pages. Good idea might be a search feature on the 404 page, so they can find what they are looking for fast and easy, without leaving your website and looking for the resource somewhere else

Create a custom "Joomla 404 component not found" page

First, in Joomla administration panel create a content page where visitors will be redirected after 404 error. Some nice examples of such pages can be found here. Use Google to find even more examples. Assign a menu item to the page, and place it in a hidden menu (a menu which module is not published). Now, you have a link for this page that looks as a regular Joomla article link. It can be with SEO enabled or without it.

Change default "Joomla 404 component not found" page

The "system" template is included in the Joomla 1.5 installation. The file error.php located in <JOOMLA_ROOT>/templates/system handles display of error pages. In the beginning of this file, you should make a redirection to the custom 404 page you created. So, open it in editor and after line

defined( '_JEXEC' ) or die( 'Restricted access' );

add code:

if (($this->error->code) == '404') {
echo file_get_contents('http://www.yourwebsite.com/your_custom_404_page');
}
else
{

Redirection will be made only if type of error is 404, so you should finish if-then statement by adding

<?php
}
?>

at the end of this file.

How about Joomla 1.6?

On Joomla 1.6 the code should look more like this:

if ($this->error->getCode()==404) {
echo file_get_contents('http://www.yourwebsite.com/your_custom_404_page');
exit();
}

Since we are editing a template that comes with Joomla, it's possible that it will be changed in some of the next revisions of Joomla core. Remember to re-apply this hack after upgrade, if needed.