Alternative 404 page for specifc directory

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1

I have a directory called /projects where I store some md files to show a project. When I reach some /project/file that does not exist it show my 404 page, that’s the normal behaivior. But I want to change it, if someone types a /project/file that does not exist I would like to show an “alternative 404” page for the projects. How can I achieve this? Any ideias?

2

It depends on how you’re hosting the site. If you’re using Github Pages, you can add a custom 404.md page:

3

Thanks for your answer, chuckhoupt.
But as said, I already have a custom 404 page… And that’s alright. My question is if can I have an alternative 404 page only for my projects collection. If someone goes to /projects/WRONGPROJECT, and this doesnt exist, in other words, in my directory doesnt have a WRONGPROJECT.md, I would like to show a 404 page different from the root one. I would like to show: THIS PROJECT DOESNT EXIST…

Is there any way to achieve that?

4

Probably not with limitation of Jekyll and GH Pages. If you had access to Apache or Nginx config you could write a rule for a subpath that uses a specific 404

On Netlify you could see if redirects gives you that control. More than redirects in a Jekyll plugin.

Otherwise you can sprinkle in some JS that looks for the referrer path and shows different content if applicable

https://www.w3schools.com/jsref/prop_doc_referrer.asp

Like if you go to /abc/xyz.html and go to /404.html then you can detect /abc/ and use that.

Or more generally, from any bad path you can use the referrer and tell the user that the path requested doesn’t exist e.g /abc/xyz.html or /a/b/g/h.html

5

Yea, as @MichaelCurrin notes, on Github Pages, the only option is to use Javascript to enhance the page. The variable document.location.pathname will contain the bad URL (e.g. "/projects/WRONGPROJECT"), which can be tested for a prefix, etc.

A very simple/joke example I setup can be seen at: https://alsprolog.com/foobar (source code: ALSProlog/404.md at master · AppliedLogicSystems/ALSProlog · GitHub). The script just swaps the URL path into the page to create a faux Prolog exception message.

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