How to use it
Pick a domain
Top of the page. The error pages you edit apply only to the selected domain (and any subdomain or addon under it, unless that subdomain has its own override).
Pick the error code to customize
cPanel pre-lists the common ones: 400 Bad Request, 401 Authorization Required, 403 Forbidden, 404 Not Found, 500 Internal Server Error. Click the code to open its editor.
Write the HTML
The editor is a plain textarea. Paste your HTML. The page is served verbatim, so include
<html>, <head>, <body>, your CSS link, etc.Use the Insert buttons at the top to drop in dynamic placeholders:| Placeholder | Resolves to |
|---|---|
| Referring URL | The page the visitor came from. |
| Visitor’s IP Address | The client IP. |
| Requested URL | The URL that triggered the error. |
| Server Name | Your domain. |
| Visitor’s Browser | The User-Agent string. |
| Redirect Status Code | The HTTP code (e.g., 404). |
Which errors are worth customizing
| Code | Worth it? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 404 Not Found | Always | Visitors hit broken links often. A useful 404 with search and navigation keeps them on the site. |
| 500 Internal Server Error | Yes | Don’t leak the default Apache page; replace with a branded “we’re looking into it” page. |
| 403 Forbidden | Sometimes | If you have password-protected directories, customize to explain rather than show the default. |
| 401 Authorization Required | Rarely | This shows after a failed HTTP Basic Auth attempt; users rarely see it on regular sites. |
| 400 Bad Request | Almost never | Triggered by malformed HTTP requests, mostly by bots. Default is fine. |
Common questions
My custom 404 page shows but the page returns a 200 status code, not 404
My custom 404 page shows but the page returns a 200 status code, not 404
Ranking-wise, this is a problem: search engines see the page as “found” rather than “missing”, so they keep crawling dead URLs. The cPanel-generated Confirm the status code with browser dev tools (Network tab) or
ErrorDocument directive should already preserve the 404 status, but if you’ve used JavaScript to redirect or PHP without setting a header, you’ll lose it. In PHP at the top of the error page:curl -I.The custom page shows on www. but not the bare domain (or vice versa)
The custom page shows on www. but not the bare domain (or vice versa)
The Error Pages tool sets the page per the cPanel “primary” name for that domain. If That applies to every host pointing at
www and the bare domain are routed separately (or one is an addon), you’ll need to set the error pages for both. Easier alternative: drop a single .htaccess line at the root public_html:public_html.A WordPress site shows my custom page only sometimes
A WordPress site shows my custom page only sometimes
WordPress handles its own routing, so 404s for URLs that match WP’s routing rules return WordPress’s
404.php template instead. That’s fine: customize 404.php in your theme. The cPanel error page is the fallback for URLs WordPress never sees, like requests for files outside WP entirely.I want to redirect 404s to the homepage instead of showing a page
I want to redirect 404s to the homepage instead of showing a page
Bad idea for SEO; search engines treat redirects-instead-of-404s as soft-404s. Keep the 404 status. If you want a friendly experience, build a 404 page that includes site search and links to popular content.