.htaccess for your 400, 403, 404, 500 pages

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/b1KSR)
I don't know that much about programming or as much about web hosting as I should, but I have been using an .htaccess file for many years, as far as I can remember since I have used FTP.   The reason I use an .htaccess file and upload it to my main root directory on my hosted server for my domains is that I don't any traffic leaks, and missed hits in my online marketing.  Why do you need this file?  Anytime ever that you created links on your website over the years, changed links, deleted pages, changed pages from .htm to .html or from property to properties, or any edit or change over the years, you likely forgot to either change them on all the sites you ever had linking to you, or other sites that link to you won't change them or it would take forever to go back and change that.  Another problem is that all of those broken links and missing pages may be going into a black hole.  Your surfers web browser may just show them "page can't display" the surfer just leaves and you never hear from them again.  If you added up all of the links, website changes, and blog url's over all of the years you have created, chances are there is a lot of traffic that is missed, the way to solve this, to catch the 404 pages is with this .htaccess file.  I upload a text file with the type below to my root server.

ErrorDocument 400 http://www.ronorr.com

ErrorDocument 403 http://www.ronorr.com

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.ronorr.com

ErrorDocument 500 http://www.ronorr.com

so for example, when you type in just about anything

www.ronorr.com/typewhateveryoufeelliketyping  or www.ronorr.com/thispagemaynotexist

you should get redirected automatically to www.ronorr.com or whatever site I or you choose.  This is a great way not to lose traffic.  Many of today's newer blog services probably have a feature like this added, as long blog url's and change in categories, can easily change the url.

 

www.RonOrr.com