A Nice 404 Handler For Apache and Movable Type

By

Michael Gorsuch

on April 27, 2008 TrackBacks (0) Comments (0)

By default, Movable Type publishes content statically and does not rely on a resident dispatcher. Unlike Wordpress, your webserver is responsible for serving up 404 pages when faulty URLs are entered.

Out of the box, this is an eye sore. I noticed that my site was doing this, and most MovableType sites I have visited this morning are doing the same. Since the fix is quick, I thought I'd do a write up.

Assumptions:

you are running Movable Type 4+
Apache is your web server of choice
your web server is configured to allow for overrides (.htaccess). If not, you can put these directives in your site configuration file and reload Apache itself

Method:

Create a page via the Movable Type admin interface. Set the filename field to '404.html'
Write up your snarky 404 message, save it, and publish
Add the following line to your .htaccess file:
ErrorDocument 404 /404.html

That's it! You should be able to hit some bad urls on your site and see your nice new error page.

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