Creating a custom 404 Page in Sitecore

Nobody wants to see the standard Sitecore 404 page. Thankfully it's really easy to change the error pages a user is redirected to through some config settings.

Your error pages can be pages in Sitecore or static HTML files. For 404 pages I would normally use a Sitecore page, that way content authors can still manage its content. For an Error Page I would recommend a static html file to avoid issues with the Error page potentially error-ing.

Add these to a patch file and update the urls accordingly:

1<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
2  <sitecore>
3    <settings>
4      <!--  ITEM NOT FOUND HANDLER
5            Url of page handling 'Item not found' errors
6      -->
7      <setting name="ItemNotFoundUrl">
8        <patch:attribute name="value">/ErrorPages/404.html</patch:attribute>
9      </setting>
10      <!--  LINK ITEM NOT FOUND HANDLER
11            Url of page handling 'Link item not found' errors
12      -->
13      <setting name="LinkItemNotFoundUrl">
14        <patch:attribute name="value">/ErrorPages/404.html</patch:attribute>
15      </setting>
16      <!--  LAYOUT NOT FOUND HANDLER
17            Url of page handling 'Layout not found' errors
18      -->
19      <setting name="LayoutNotFoundUrl">
20        <patch:attribute name="value">/ErrorPages/404.html</patch:attribute>
21      </setting>
22      <!--  ERROR HANDLER
23            Url of page handling generic errors
24      -->
25       <setting name="ErrorPage">
26        <patch:attribute name="value">/ErrorPages/Error.html</patch:attribute>
27      </setting>
28    </settings>
29  </sitecore>
30</configuration>

These settings are already defined in the web.config file and changing them here will have the same effect, but I recommend adding patch config files as it will make your solution easier to update in the future.