Creating Custom 404 Pages in WordPress Themes

Posted on 21st June 2023

“404. That’s an error,” says the familiar voice of Google’s 404 page. It’s a page we’ve all seen countless times, whether we’re stuck in an endless loop of clicking on broken links or we’ve accidentally typed in the wrong URL.

For website owners, a 404 page is an opportunity to be creative and show off their brand’s personality. For website visitors, a 404 page is an opportunity to be helpful and find what they’re looking for.

Creating a custom 404 page is a great way to show your website’s personality. It’s also a great way to be helpful to your website’s visitors.

When you create a custom 404 page, you have the opportunity to:

Choose a design that matches your website’s style

Include helpful links to your website’s most popular pages

Include a search bar so visitors can find what they’re looking for

Include a contact form so visitors can get in touch with you

Creating a custom 404 page is a two-step process:

Step 1: Create the page

Step 2: Set up your server to display the page

Creating the page

The first step is to create the page. You can do this in any text editor, but we recommend using WordPress’s Customizer.

To create the page in the Customizer:

Log in to your WordPress website.

In the left-hand menu, click on Appearance.

Click on Customize.

Click on 404 Page.

In the 404 Page section, select the radio button next to Custom 404 Page.

Click on Publish.

Now that you’ve created the page, it’s time to add the content.

Start by adding a headline. This could be something as simple as “Oops! We couldn’t find that page.”

Next, add a brief message explaining that the page couldn’t be found and inviting visitors to search for what they’re looking for or contact you for help.

Then, add a search bar. This will allow visitors to search your website for the content they’re looking for.

Finally, add a contact form. This will allow visitors to get in touch with you if they can’t find what they’re looking for.

When you’re finished, click on Publish.

Setting up your server

The next step is to set up your server to display the page.

To do this, you’ll need to edit your .htaccess file.

If you’re not sure how to do this, we recommend contacting your hosting provider for help.

Once you’ve edited your .htaccess file, you’ll need to add a line of code that looks like this:

ErrorDocument 404 /404.php

This code tells your server to display the 404.php page whenever a 404 error occurs.

That’s it! Now, when someone visits a broken link on your website, they’ll see your custom 404 page.

When you start working on a new WordPress project, one of the first things you should do is define a custom 404 page.

A 404 page is the page that visitors will see when they try to access a page that doesn’t exist on your site.

The default 404 page that comes with WordPress is pretty basic and doesn’t do a great job of helping visitors find what they’re looking for.

Creating a custom 404 page is a great way to improve the user experience on your site and help visitors find the content they’re looking for.

There are a few different ways to create a custom 404 page in WordPress.

One option is to use a plugin like 404 Page by SeedProd.

This plugin makes it easy to create a custom 404 page without having to edit any code.

Another option is to edit your theme’s 404.php template file.

This method is a bit more technical, but it gives you more control over the design of your 404 page.

If you’re not comfortable editing code, you can also use a WordPress theme that comes with a pre-built 404 page template.

Once you’ve selected a method for creating your custom 404 page, it’s time to start adding content to it.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when creating your 404 page:

Make sure the page is easy to understand.

The page should explain that the visitor has reached a page that doesn’t exist on your site.

It should also include a search form so visitors can search for the content they’re looking for.

Include links to your most popular content.

This will help visitors find the content they’re looking for and also reduce the number of 404 errors you see in your logs.

Make sure the page is visually appealing.

Your 404 page is an important part of your site’s design, so make sure it matches the overall look and feel of your site.

Once you’ve created your custom 404 page, don’t forget to test it to make sure it’s working properly.

You can do this by trying to access a page that doesn’t exist on your site.

If you see your custom 404 page, you know it’s working correctly.

Creating a custom 404 page is a great way to improve the user experience on your site.

It’s also a good idea to test your 404 page to make sure it’s working properly.

If you’re a WordPress theme developer, it’s likely that you’re familiar with the process of creating custom 404 pages. In most cases, the default 404 page that comes with WordPress is sufficient. However, there may be times when you want to create a custom 404 page to match the look and feel of your theme.

Creating a custom 404 page is relatively simple. The first thing you need to do is create a new file in your theme’s directory and name it 404.php. Once you’ve done that, you can add the following code to your 404.php file:

As you can see, the code above defines a custom template for our 404 page. The template includes a header and a footer, just like any other WordPress page. In the middle, we have a section with the class “error-404”. This is where we’ll add our custom content.

Next, we need to add some content to our 404.php file. In this example, we’ll add a simple message letting the user know that the page they’re looking for can’t be found. We’ll also add a search form so the user can try to find the page they’re looking for.

Here’s the code for our example 404.php file:

And that’s all there is to it! Now when a user visits a page that doesn’t exist, they’ll see our custom 404 page instead of the default WordPress 404 page.