How To Create A Custom 404 Page In Squarespace
I’ve only recently made my own Custom 404 Page and thought I’d share the process seeing as it’s a relatively hidden Squarespace feature.
What Is A 404 Page?
A 404 page is where a user will be taken if they follow a broken link or type in the correct domain but miss type the url slug. Its purpose is to tell the user that the page they are looking for can’t be found.
The Squarespace default for this is a bit sad, not very inviting and actually points the user to the notoriously bad search function within Squarespace.
Default Squarespace 404 Page
Custom 404 Page In Squarespace
Squarespace allows us to set one of the pages on our site to display as the 404 page. I wouldn’t recommend choosing one of your usual pages as this could confuse the user, its best to still tell them the exact thing they were looking for isn’t available.
I created a New Page in my Not Linked Section, added a headline to let the user know the page isn’t available and then provided a few options of popular pages on my site that they may be looking for.
To set this as the Custom 404 Page you will need to navigate to Pages, System Pages, 404 Page.
My Custom 404 Page
NoIndex
We likely don’t want this page to be indexed by search engines, as we don’t want to have people purposefully land on this page.
In the Page Settings we can go to the SEO tab and toggle on the ‘Hide Page From Search Results’ button.
