Add not found page

[dns2utf8]

I noticed while renaming chapters people clicking old urls get a plain 404.

• Add a 404 page with the current TOC
• Add an option to generate .htaccess or similar files for deployment
• Add docs for deployment

[Michael-F-Bryan]

This sounds like a good idea. If a generated 404 page has the TOC down the side then at least people will know what pages are available and find the page's new location.

Resolving this issue should be easy enough to do and would be a good entry-level PR, so I might copy this issue into the TWIR call for participation thread to see if anyone wants to take it.

Rough Outline

From what I can see point 1 should just be a case of generating a blank page towards the end of the HTML renderer's render() method.

You can then add a configuration switch to the output.html table (check out HtmlConfig) which is off by default and enables automatic generation of a .htaccess file. For servers other than Apache we're probably going to have to do it on a case-by-case basis. For example I know The Book is hosted on a S3 bucket, but I've got no idea how you're meant to set the 404 document there.

Point 3 is also fairly straightforward, just document what was done in points 1 and 2 in the user guide.

[JadedBlueEyes]

BTW, making the file 404.html would probably be a good idea, as gh-pages, firebase and netlify all use 404.html as the 404 page by default.

[dns2utf8]

I implemented something for my website that I am currently extending with a little search engine:
https://estada.ch/2018/11/12/caa-site-configuration-security-and-http2/
The search uses the RSS/XML feed of the generator. Maybe a similar design could work?

[kravemir]

Custom error pages are usually easy when developing custom application, and listening to HTTP directly.

However, static site generator generates only static HTML files with resources. And, error pages depend on the server serving the static site. And, those servers might have a different way of defining error pages. And, a server might not respect .htaccess files,..

For example, to define custom error pages for gitlab pages: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/pages/introduction.html#custom-error-codes-pages

[JadedBlueEyes]

Gitlab pages is yet another site that uses 404.html.

[ehuss]

Closed via #1221.

[dns2utf8]

🎉 I am very happy to see this is implemented now 🎉
Thank you all 👍