Smart Custom 404 Error Page

Description

Bringing visitors to your website takes time and effort. Every visitor is important. The default 404 error page of most themes does not provide any information on what to find on your site. A first-time visitor, who does not know you, is left in a dead end and leaves your website. Set up a helpful custom 404 error page to keep them on your site!

This handy plugin allows you to easily create your own 404 error page without any effort and it works with almost every theme.

NerdPress has adopted Smart Custom 404 Page! Read the announcement here.

We have been fans of this plugin for many years, and we are grateful for Peter's many years of service to the community. Peter retired from plugin development in October 2023, so we have jumped in to help ensure this plugin continues to work well now and in the future.

Create your custom 404 error page just like any other page using the WordPress Editor. Then go to Appearance > 404 Error Page and select the created page as your custom 404 error page. That’s it!

Unlike similar plugins, the 404page plugin does not create redirects. That’s quite important because a correct code 404 is delivered which tells search engines that the page does not exist and has to be removed from the index.

Additionally, the 404page plugin does not create additional server requests.

The only requirement for this plugin is that you change the Permalink Structure in Settings > Permalinks to anything else but 'Plain.' This also activates the WordPress 404 error handling.

The Plugin offers a block 'URL causing 404 error' for the block-based editor to show the URL that caused the error. The block offers three display options: 'Page' to show the page including path, 'Domain Path' to show the URL without protocol and parameters, and 'Full' to show the complete URL.

The Plugin offers a shortcode 'pp_404_url' for the classic editor to show the URL that caused the error. There are three possible options to display the URL.

This plugin does not set cookies, collect or store any data, or send any data to external servers.

If you are a theme developer, you can add native support for the 404page plugin to your theme for full control.