Theme Tip: Create custom error pages with the Pages app

When IPS4 encounters an error (be it a simple 404 Not Found or a more complex configuration issue), the user sees a standard built-in error page. That's fine in many cases, but did you know you can create your own error page using our Pages app?

This is a particularly good approach for communities that use Pages for their website too. If you have built a website theme, the standard error page may not fit with your visual style, so building your own error page allows you to improve it. You might want to show some helpful links to other parts of your website, for example.

Creating your error page

The first step is creating your error page in Pages. Note that for this page, you must create a manual page - the Page Builder tool can't be used in this case.

In order to show the error on your page, there's two special tags you should insert in the page content. When your page is shown in response to an error, Pages will swap out these tags for the relevant text. They are:

• {error_code}
  Replaced with the technical error code for this error. This code identifies the exact piece of code that triggered the error, and can be given to IPS support technicians to help diagnose problems.
• {error_message}
  Replaced with a human-friendly description of the error that occurred.

Configuring Pages to use the error page

Next, set Pages to display the error page. You do this in the Pages section; click the Advanced Settings button, and select your page from the list. Note that this will replace all error pages across the suite - not just errors triggered by Pages itself!

Have a request for a theme tip? Let us know in the comments and we'll try and help out in a future tip!