Version: 1.00, by JamesAB
Developer Last Online: Sep 2023
Category: Miscellaneous Hacks -
Version: 3.8.0
Rating:
Released: 03-05-2009
Last Update: 03-05-2009
Installs: 99
Supported Uses Plugins
Re-useable Code Additional Files Translations
About this hack:
This hack allows you to use vBulletin template driven pages for 400, 401, 403, 404 and 500 webserver error pages that will perfectly match your own forum's design. Five custom pages are added to your forum by this hack. You can then instruct your webserver to use these pages for it's error pages.
Features:
Error pages will still work even if your forum is turned off in the AdminCP.
Admin CP option to automatically redirect to your forum's main page after the error page is shown for 5 seconds.
Admin CP option to show or hide notices on error pages.
Installation information on hack:
Files to upload: 5
New templates added: 5
Time to install: 10 minutes.
You can test that the pages are working correctly by visiting:
<URL OF YOUR FORUM HOME>/400_forum.php
<URL OF YOUR FORUM HOME>/401_forum.php
<URL OF YOUR FORUM HOME>/403_forum.php
<URL OF YOUR FORUM HOME>/404_forum.php
<URL OF YOUR FORUM HOME>/500_forum.php
Next you will need to edit your webserver's configuration file or add lines into an .htaccess file.
.................................................. ..........
If your forum directory is the same as your website's document root, add these lines:
.................................................. ..........
If your forum is located in a directory within your website's document root, you'll need to replace <forum_directory> with the directory of your forum in these lines:
You can easily customize the templates for each indivual error page.
The templates can be found grouped together under HTTP Error Templates.
For the purpose of this hack, I used very generic error messages.
You can easily edit any of the phrases to best suit your site.
Each page uses three different vBulletin phrases.
The error name in the navbit. (for example... jab_404_error_navbit)
The title of the error table. (for example... jab_404_error_title)
The message shown for the error. (for example... jab_404_error_message)
These show the five error pages in vBulletin's default style.
Your pages will use your own forum's style and look just like your other pages.
In the "400 Bad Request" screen shot, I indicated the three phrases that can be edited.
a bug found in these scripts: by default they don't modify http header your server gives out with the page so for any of these errors the header will contain 200 OK instead of corresponding error. found this accidentally while trying to find out why google doesn't want to authorize me for my website.
this is easily enough fixed by adding the following line near the top of script:
Code:
header("HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found");
change 404 not found to corresponding error for each file. works for me, at least google stopped complaining.
i'd recommend you to do so. in my experience, 404 is one of the most important error codes and giving out 200 OK when a page is not found can be very misleading for search engines. their crawlers don't actually read pages content, you know, they rely on http status codes.
a bug found in these scripts: by default they don't modify http header your server gives out with the page so for any of these errors the header will contain 200 OK instead of corresponding error. found this accidentally while trying to find out why google doesn't want to authorize me for my website.
this is easily enough fixed by adding the following line near the top of script:
Code:
header("HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found");
change 404 not found to corresponding error for each file. works for me, at least google stopped complaining.
Can someone tell if this should be after <?php or before?