It's a common experience for users to encounter an Error Page when attempting to access certain URLs. This typically occurs when users try to access private links or premium content that is not publicly available by default.
This article will explore the reasons behind this occurrence and offer guidance on customizing the error page.
404 - Error page examples
If some pages exist on your school pages authoring interface, it means that they are not accessible for users, hence they are redirected to a 404 error page. The most common reasons for that are the following:
- The page is set to draft.
For more information on how to change the status of a page, check this article.
- The page has a past expiration date.
- The page is affiliate self-registration (available for our Learning Center plans or higher), and the relevant affiliate setting is OFF.
- The page is from an inactive site template, and the corresponding page does not exist in the active site template.
- The page is a bundle, course, or subscription page, and the relevant product is draft/private/archived.
- The admin shares an author link to the users from the editing interface that only the admin has access to, instead of the public ones (contains the: /author/ in the URL)
- The admin has inserted drip-feed for all of the sections, which are considered premium content, and no section is left Free or unlocked for users to navigate to. As a result, users will view an error page when trying to access the course's contents since all the sections are drip-fed and not available. The best solution here would be to always leave the first section unlocked.
Replace and Customize your 404 - Error Page
You could customize the error page to make it less alarming and more approachable to your users:
1. Add a new page (available for our Pro trainer plans or higher) with Public Status
2. In the page creation process, in the slug option, you will need to add "error", as this will replace the default error page automatically.
In the new customized error page add a button that will redirect users to the After Login Page, or just insert a section with Media & Text and have the Top-bar available, in order for users to be able to navigate again back to your school.
We recommend having only one section available on the Error page since it's not a "Sales" page but only a default one that helps users navigate back to the school's main page.