How to Create a Default Error Page for Joomla

Show infomative errors on website using default error page

Joomla is a free, open source, content-management system created using the PHP programming language. You can use it to edit website content without programming skills. When errors occur on a website, it is good practice to show users a customized error page, to give them information about the error. Joomla comes complete with a default error page setup for the system. This is used if you don't create a customized error page. You can create an error page for a template by copying the default page to your template files. This overrides the default template.

Things You'll Need

• Notepad

Instructions

1. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the "Templates" folder in the root of your Joomla site. Go to the "System" folder and select the "error.php" file. Copy this file using "Ctrl + C."

2. Navigate to the theme folder for your site. This is inside the "Templates" folder, at the root of the site files. Paste the "error.php" file using "Ctrl + V." This will override the file located in the system folder and will now be shown when an error occurs on the site.

3. Open "error.php" file in the template folder in Notepad.

4. Customize the file to your requirements. You can change the style on the page by copying the "error.css" file to the template folder and linking this new stylesheet to the new location. Save the changes to the file.

References

• Joomla.org: Custom Error Pages
• Ultijoomla.com: How to Create a Custom 404 Error Page