Hi, I searched this site for a while and could come up with nothing. Forgive me if it's already been answered, point me in the right direction and I'll be happy to read

I want to build a custom 404 page for use on my site with this theme, but have no idea how to go about it. This theme is crazy complex for me!

I greatly appreciate any assistance you can offer. Thanks!

One thing you could build off of is the 404.php file that is in the Twenty Eleven theme folder. Just put a copy in the Atahualpa Theme folder and you will have a new 404 page with a search box. You could then go ahead and style as you like.

Originally Posted by lmilesw

One thing you could build off of is the 404.php file that is in the Twenty Eleven theme folder. Just put a copy in the Atahualpa Theme folder and you will have a new 404 page with a search box. You could then go ahead and style as you like.

Thank you very much! I thought about doing something like this but didn't fully know the ramifications of pulling a file out of another theme. I'll play around with it a bit today.

I didn't know either when I first tried it. Sometimes it's a matter of just "giving it a shot". Worse case scenario for this situation is you would have to delete the 404.php file.

Let us know how it works out for you.

So, I did that, and the resulting 404 page was hopelessly borked.

Luckily, it turned out to be much, much easier than it had to be. All I had to do was be stuck at work for a while waiting for another team to do something before I can begin my work. This gave me some "free time."

Looking in the index.php file, it would appear the 404 is built in. So I copied just the top part of the file, and the bottom footer call. I added my own little flair in the middle, and here is my result:

PHP Code:

<?php
list($bfa_ata, $cols, $left_col, $left_col2, $right_col, $right_col2, $bfa_ata['h_blogtitle'], $bfa_ata['h_posttitle']) = bfa_get_options();
get_header();
extract($bfa_ata);
?>

<h1><?php _e('Not Found','atahualpa'); ?></h1>
<p><?php _e("Well that's embarrassing! I can't seem to find that!","atahualpa"); ?></p>
<p><?php _e("You could try one of two things. You can either:","atahualpa"); ?></p>
<h4><?php _e("Search","atahualpa"); ?></h4>
<p><?php get_search_form( $echo ); ?></p>
<h4><?php _e("OR","atahualpa"); ?></h4>
<p><?php _e("You could try the old site, <a href='link-to-old-site'>link-to-old-site</a>.","atahualpa"); ?></p>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

I saved that as 404.php, and bingo! Everything works as expected.

Now I will use the same template to create a custom author.php file.