Can't make custom 404 error page work

Thanks Ian,

Your post reminds me of my dad recounting a story of back in the keypunch and card reader days, at Uni, slipping a poem on comment cards onto the bottom of a programming job and then removing it before they cards were picked up, so the poem would appear on the bottom of the printout. That's how he tried to get dates aparently.

Thanks for the comment, I was reading another post last night similar to what you were saying when Azadi's suggestion worked.

The only weird thing I have now is the default error page seems to be 'Index.cfm', when in fact I have a URL mapping of '/404.cfm' designated in the Custom Errors window of IIS for that site. '/404.cfm' is in the root of the site just like Index.cfm is. Must be some kind of gremins similar to what you mention at work with this as well.

Thanks for the comments, think I will simply stay away from the missing template handler.

Edit: Just solved the problem mentioned above. '404.cfm' still had some code in it that CF did not like. As soon as I removed the bad code, '404.cfm' started to work as it should. Now everything is as it should be. Thanks again to everyone for all the assistance, now I'm back to where I left off 24 hrs ago, finally....

Christina Garibaldi wrote:
>
> I'm wondering if anyone can elaborate on what the 'missing template handler'
> field does in CF Administrator and if anything can be done there?
>


The challenge with the 'missing template handler' is that it does not
work as many would expect it to with web site web roots. A little
understood fact of ColdFusion servers is that they often have *two* web
roots, especially the Java flavors such as 'Multi-home' and 'J2EE'.

For example, the IIS web root for one of my web sites on our multi-home
ColdFusion development server is at 'D:\\playground\. But the
ColdFusion server also uses the
'E:\JRun4\servers\playground\cfusion.ear\cfusion.war\'.

It is the latter directory that a 'missing template handler' or 'server
wide exception handler' must live in. I do not fully understand this,
but it is the only way I have ever been able to make these work.

HTH
Ian

P.S. Since ColdFusion will look in it's web root before it looks into
the web site's web root for any file, a wicked way to drive a coworker
crazy is to put an index.cfm file with some mean message in it inside
the ColdFusion's web root. It could take them weeks to find out what is
going on and you can watch how fast their hairline recedes during the
search.

P.P.S No I have never done this, but I do think about it once in a while
when frustrated. :)

Thanks Azadi,

I was just playing with that field in the Administrator Settings and having problems with the paths when your note came in. I did as you suggested, and was happy to see that finally it works.

Curiously though, it now defaults to 'Index.cfm' in the root of the site rather than '404.cfm' that I had stipulated in the custom errors field in IIS. So I'm thinking I must have set 'Index.cfm' perhaps in the global IIS settings or somewhere else.

If I'm thinking correctly then, this would only disable CF Mappings for this site and not all the sites wouldn't it?

Thanks again, even if I can't get it to go to '404.cfm', it's a huge improvement!

Thanks Azadi,

Earlier I was poking around in IIS wondering if I could do something along those lines. So, as I believe all the old mappings are not being used anymore, I went ahead andgave it a try, I think I could live with that solution if I could make it work. I stopped ans started the website in IIS after I finished. But regreattably, noting seemed to change.

I'm wondering if anyone can elaborate on what the 'missing template handler' field does in CF Administrator and if anything can be done there?

As a last resort I was thnking about trying to find the error text for that page and at least editing it in the short term with links to the home pages.

Thanks again.

you can also try this:

- Got to IIS Management Console
- Expand your Websites
- Right-click on your website and select 'Properties'
- Select the 'Home Directory' tab
- Click the 'Configuration...' button
- On the 'Mappings' tab in the Application Configuration pop-up, select
".cfm" under Application extensions
- Click 'Edit...' button
- Select the 'Verify that file exists' check box

this will make IIS check that requested .cfm page actually exists on the
server, before passing the processing of the page to CF, and if it does
not IIS will display the custom 404 page you have defined in it for this
website.

the downside of this, iirc, is that you can't use CF Mappings... but i
may be wrong on this one, as i do not actually use this 'Verify that
file exists' setting on any of my CF sites...

were you on CF8, you could use the onMissingTemplate() method in
Application.cfc to display a custom 404.cfm page (or do whatever else
you wnat to do when a page does not exist)


Azadi Saryev
Sabai-dee.com
http://www.sabai-dee.com/

Thanks Jamie.

One thing that I was looking at but couldn't get a handle on. In the Server Administrator Interface there is a 'missing template handler' field. However if I entered the name of 404.cfm in there, it rejected it. Obviously I don't know how to handle that field. Can that field be used to solve my problem if I were to place a 404.cfm in every CF Site?

My remote access isn't working right so I can't test this on any of the dev servers I have in the office. If no one else has any ideas before tomorrow afternoon I'll run some tests and get back to you then with the results.

Christina,

Have you tried the process outlined here:

http://www.bennadel.com/blog/108-Using-ColdFusion-to-Handle-404-Errors-Page-Not-Found-On-Development-Server.htm

Sorry if you have, but I have to check!