A well-designed custom 404 page will help you keep visitors on your site even if they don’t find what they were looking for. Here’s a step-by-step instruction on how to build a great 404 page that will engage visitors and stop them from bouncing off your site.
You can either watch the detailed tutorial below or scroll below that to read the image/text version of the tutorial.
Step 1: Activate 404 to 301 Plugin
First of all, you must go to your WordPress site and install a plugin called 404 to 301. You can do that by choosing Plugins from the left-side menu and then click on Add New.
In the search box, type 404 to 301.
There are many 404 plugins, but the one I’m recommending has something the others do not: a log feature.
Basically, this plugin redirects the visitor to a custom 404 page and keeps a referral log for you. This means you’ll see the URL they were trying to access when they hit the 404.
If you notice that particular pages are throwing 404s over and over again, it might be smart you create a page there or fix the link.
But we’ll get to that in a minute.
First, install and activate the plugin.
Step 2: Set Up the 404 Plugin
Once activated, hover over 404 to 301 in the left hand menu to get to the General Settings for the plugin. Then click on 404 Settings.
On this page, you may choose and adjust your 404 page. You can fine-tune settings as redirect types, custom URLs, enabling or disabling the logging of 404 errors and more.
It is smart to set the 301 redirect (SEO) to an existing page which we’re going to make in the next step.
Step 3: Adding a New Page
Save any changes you made in the plugin settings.
The hover over Pages in the left-side menu and click on ‘Add New’
Next, you’ll have to think of a title and suitable content for the page. After you’ve created your 404 page, go back to 404 settings menu and choose the 404 page you’ve generated.
If you use a plugin like Visual Composer you can quickly and easily create beautiful 404 pages with very little effort. More on that in a bit.
After you’ve created the new page, go back to the 404 to 301 plugin settings and choose your new 404 page as the redirect page. Then save changes.
Your action will also appear in the error logs.
Back in your WordPress admin, hover over 404 to 301 in the left-hand side menu and click on the Error Logs item.
You see an entry with the page URL you just tried to visit. If the same paths appear often in the error log, it might be smart to create a page for that path.
Step 5: Creating a Custom 404 Page With Visual Composer
Finally, it’s time to spice up the 404 page you’ve created with Visual Composer. If you don’t have Visual Composer, check it out here.
Go to your 404 page and click on “Edit with Visual Composer”
When you access the Visual Editor, It is fastest to use a template. To pick a template, follow these steps:
- Click on Add Template
- Click on Template Library
- Access Template Library
- Pick a suitable Template
- Download it
After you download the selected template, you then exit the template library. It’s basic designer work from there on.
Click on your downloaded template from the list and adjust the page according to your preferences. You can change the text, size and color of the text and access numerous options by clicking on the row settings menu.
Note: If you don’t see the Template Library in your Visual Composer then you don’t have a dedicated license from CodeCanyon. Click here to get one. The speed at which you can build awesome pages using it is easy worth the cheap price.
Finally, you can add more content on your 404 page. When considering what to put on the 404 page, think about your visitor.
They were looking for something and got an error. What do you want to tell them or show them to ease their frustration?
Common things would be a short video, a humorous graphic, links and / or a search bar so they can search for topics.
Basically, that’s how custom 404 pages are built. I hope this article was helpful and that the custom 404 page we helped you create will enable you to keep visitors on your WordPress site.
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