> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.noxity.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Error Pages
> Customize the page visitors see for 400, 401, 403, 404, 500, and other HTTP errors. Per-domain editor with variable insertion.
Error Pages is an editor for the HTML Apache serves when a request fails with an HTTP error code. The default pages are blank and ugly; this tool lets you replace them with branded ones.
## How to use it
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).
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.
The editor is a plain textarea. Paste your HTML. The page is served verbatim, so include ``, ``, ``, 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`). |
The editor writes the HTML to `~/public_html/.shtml` and adds an `ErrorDocument` line to the domain's `.htaccess`. Live immediately.
## 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
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 `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:
```php theme={}
```
Confirm the status code with browser dev tools (Network tab) or `curl -I`.
The Error Pages tool sets the page per the cPanel "primary" name for that domain. If `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`:
```apache theme={}
ErrorDocument 404 /404.html
```
That applies to every host pointing at `public_html`.
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.
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.
## Need a hand?
Best for anything that needs an account check or a config change on our end.
Faster for quick questions during business hours.