404 error page

[Jo@apartyshop]

Can we use a brochure page as a custom 404 page by putting the relevant line in .htaccess to redirect to /acatalog/error404.html ?

Would this be the preferred method to keep the site theme the same on the 404 page?

Would this method serve the proper 404 response to crawlers?

Any help, guidance or opinion would be very much appreciated.

[peblaco]

Yes you can. I have used that method before as it keeps the page design up to date. However you may want to add custom code blockifs to hide the pages from the brochure menu and sitemap page.

[graphicz]

You will often find the 404 page displayed without css.

Make this mod:

Make a true/false variable at brochure level say 404 and have its default value false.
Make it 'true' for the 404 page

 <actinic:block if="%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22404%22%20%2f%3e%20%3d%3d%20true">
	 <base href="http://www.yourdomainnamehere.co.uk/acatalog/" target="_blank">
 </actinic:block>
 <actinic:block if="%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22404%22%20%2f%3e%20%3d%3d%20false">
	 <actinic:variable name="BaseHref" />
  </actinic:block>