Comments on: Thesis Tutorial – Customizing the 404 Page

By: Doug C.

Doug C. — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:29:47 +0000

Ok, nevermind. I figured it out. The colons had reverted back to question marks so I had to go in manually and change them again. Weird.

By: Doug C.

Doug C. — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 03:37:30 +0000

Something odd. Today I accidentally typed in the wrong addy on my site and got my 404 page, but it wasn’t my customized page. It had went back to the default. I checked my custom_functions.php file and my customized 404 page code is still in there.

Any ideas why it reverted back?

By: Doug C.

Doug C. — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:29:40 +0000

Hmm, it wasn’t working for me at first. I opened the custom_functions.php and added the code exactly like you said, then saved it. It did not appear on the 404 page and I was still seeing the default message.

Next I took a peek at custom_functions.php via the Dashboard > Appearance > Editor and noticed that for every colon there was a question mark. So I had to manually replace each one by typing it in and now it works.

You may want to mention this in your tutorials where you have people copying and pasting code with a text editor.

By: MCNB

MCNB — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 11:39:29 +0000

The question is, why would a professional product such as Thesis have a default 404 message of “Gnarly, Dude” instead of a more generic default.

By: Clint

Clint — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:11:50 +0000

You can also modify the 404 page by installing the OpenHook add-on to your Thesis installation and it will let you do a lot of hook editing without having to physically modify the custom_functions.php file.

By: Tsudohnimh

Tsudohnimh — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 19:42:07 +0000

Great resource thanks for taking the time to share this.

One quick question: Is there an easy way to disable the columns on the 404?
Thanks in Advance

@tsudo
KnowtheNetwork.com

By: Dansko

Dansko — Wed, 27 May 2009 10:42:37 +0000

What I generally do it redirect user to main page of the site and add a 404 message at the top.

By: Torley

Torley — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 13:06:49 +0000

OMG check out what I did, yayzerama Sugarrae!

» http://torley.com/404

By: Torley

Torley — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 13:06:24 +0000

The “fancy” quotes weirdness also gave me a problem — thx for the above pointers, after I did a find-and-replace I was good to go!

By: Emplic

Emplic — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 14:16:35 +0000

Thanks for this Rae — not using Thesis (I know, I know…) but will implement with the theme I have in place. The idea behind customizing the 404 page isn’t new, but your tutorial and perspective is helpful.

The list of “100 awesome and creative” 404 pages is actually the jewel of this post. Favourites have to be the ‘Truth Behind 404′ and the ‘Whining, Nerd Twins’. Damn, wish I could say that I don’t identify with the latter…

Anyway, thanks again. (Chuck Norris, how could I not mention Chuck Norris!?!?)