CTS's Free Downloadable Computer Software: Error Pages

A Thought…

Two farthings = One Ha’penny. Two ha’pennies = One Penny. Three pennies = A Thrupenny Bit. Two Thrupences = A Sixpence. Two Sixpences = One Shilling, or Bob. Two Bob = A Florin. One Florin and One Sixpence = Half a Crown. Four Half Crowns = Ten Bob Note. Two Ten Bob Notes = One Pound (or 240 pennies). One Pound and One Shilling = One Guinea. The British resisted decimalized currency for a long time because they thought it was too complicated.

— Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaimen, Good Omens

Error document maker for Apache servers

With errorpages, you can easily knock out error document pages usable in an Apache server. I have no idea if they would work in an IIS server, but should work in any server that supports <error number>.shtml files called upon that error's appearance.

C Source utility

The program, as shipped, produces 400.shtml, 401.shtml, 403.shtml, 404.shtml, 406.shtml, and 500.shtml files. They are ready to be placed in the root directory of your site (or could be placed elsewhere, with the appropriate entry in your .htaccess or similar file). The C code may be easily modified to change the list of error documents produced, or (less easily) the template for the output pages.

The program is controlled by a configuration file, named on the command line. This configuration file specifies things like the site name, business name, domain, webmaster email address, background color, and business logo. The last two items may be used to produce an error document that fairly closely matches the style of your site pages.

The whole purpose of errorpages is to provide a quick way to create similar-looking error document files for a number of errors, for a site, which is compatible with your site's appearance (at least, color and logo). Of course, you are free to customize the code to produce a set of error documents with a different flavor. We won't be offended.

C Program Source (424 downloads, last download at 2025-01-12 18:47:44) — C code to compile and link, if ep.exe doesn't work for you.
Program Executable (425 downloads, last download at 2025-01-12 18:47:33) — DOS/Windows command line program to run on your PC to generate the error pages.
Sample Configuration File (677 downloads, last download at 2025-01-12 18:47:55) — CTS configuration that you modify for your site's specifics.

To run "ep", customize and rename the configuration file.

ep < yourConfigFile