Midwest Geek

Since I get about 150 visitors a day from Area 404, I’m going to show you how to error properly.

For those who don’t know what a 404 error is, it’s really simple. When you go to a webpage that isn’t there and see the famous, “This page cannot be displayed”, that is a 404 error. If you still don’t get it, for the love of all things good and holy, read what Wikipedia has to say about them.

Anyway, this will cover how to create them for Apache on a Linux system. There are a few things you will need and they are all easy if you already of your own website, blog, or whatever.

You will need:

1. 1. FTP (or SSH) access to your site.
2. 2. Something to create a couple of web pages with.
3. 3. Creativity.

We are going to have to work this list from the bottom up, since I am way too lazy to go back and edit what I just typed. Bust out the creativity and create yourself single webpage that works; it could contain anything from simple black text to a brilliantly created flash file and just name it 404.html.

I’ll wait while you finish that….

All done…great. I am so patient, you’re rather lucky to have me.

Now that you are done flowing your creative juices, you need to get those files on your web server. They can really go anywhere as we are going to create a file that links to them. Since you have either FTP or SSH access, go ahead and get the files on your web server.

Pretty easy so far right? Well it just as easy from here on out.

If you are on Windows, open up notepad. Linux users use whatever text editor you like and you Mac people…uh, open something very texty.

Now that we have all done that and so that I don’t have to type out three different sets of instructions, you need to save a file to your desktop call “1.htaccess” (without the quotes). The file cannot be “1.htaccess.txt” or “1.htaccess.doc” or anything like that. Now that you have that created open it up and place this one simple line in it.

ErrorDocument 404 /404.html

You will want the /404.html to be the path to your actually 404.html. So if you placed your 404 files in /error/404.html, make sure that is displayed properly in the file and save it.

Now, before you upload this, make sure you don’t already have a file called “.htaccess” on your web server. If you do and you overwrite it with this rather blank “.htaccess” file it could break your website. If you do have such a file, just copy the line into it anywhere and you should be off and running.

If you don’t have such a file, go ahead and upload this one. Once you have it on your web server, change the name of the file from “1.htaccess” to “.htaccess”.

Test it by going to http://www.yoursite.com/blahblahblah and you should see the webpage you created. If you didn’t, double check that you are on a Linux server and that you have followed all the steps above.

Done.

To see why I get 150 people are showing up to see how I error, just go to http://www.midwestgeek.net/thispageisnotreal

There was a great book I stole my title from, and this is what I have become. Plugged in, casting scripts, building servers, and forging applications.

Between personal and professional projects I have no idea where to really start. I am totally overwhelmed and somehow managed to get that way in less then 24 hours. I’ve put myself into one hell of a pickle and I am not sure how to get out, I think I’m going to develop ADD before this is all over.

Yesterday in our weekly staff meeting, a project that had been threatened to be rolled out for sometime was, and it was rolled onto me. Part of the fun of said project is that I get to learn a new Operating System by the end of the year. Now this isn’t a case of a simple introduction like a pleasant “Hi How are you?”, I’m to get all medieval on it, medieval to the point that both Ving Rhames and Quentin Terantino will avert their eyes. Along with running a OS that I have never operated before last night, I get to install, configure and run a mail server, challenge response system, user controls, firewalls, etc (I’ve never used any of them before). Oh ya, and the best parts, write all the technical documentation and train everyone else (Did I mention I am the NEWEST employee)! I was told that since I used a “tougher” OS at home for fun and no profit, I am the best suited for this gem of a project.

NaBloPoMo is also upon us and I want to really participate, I need to write more for myself, and this is something that will motivate me to do it. Hopefully I will spill something interesting on this site that is marginally better then the drivel I normally spread. As this is my first post, I honestly hope it doesn’t go down from here. Because I mean, come on.

I think any chance for a site redesign this month is probably not going to happen. By probably, I mean not a chance in hell. I have scratched out some designs that I am thinking through, however to sit down and work is really just not going to be a possibility until December. In the few minutes I took for lunch today, I found, what I think is the most beautiful site I have seen to date. In my humble non-professional web design opinion, http://www.verdurethought.com/ is by far the best use of pixels available. If I pull something off 1/10 or hell 1/100 that good, I would be very happy.

Aside from those fun projects, I still haven’t even cracked The Grapes of Wrath and that brothers me. I will more then likely start braking down my day to 1 hour and 30 minute increments and assigning tasks to them, once this server roll out is done, I’ll be good again and really ready for a vacation by then.

Tonight I get to curl up with a wonderful little page turner about advanced message transport systems and a couple of cups of pudding, because pudding just makes things better.