Design custom error screens
When something goes wrong, visitors should still see your site. Design custom error screens for each status.
The error screens
| Status | Picker label | When it shows |
|---|---|---|
| 404 | 404 · Not found | The URL doesn't match any screen. |
| 401 | 401 · Members only | A members-only screen, requested by a signed-out visitor. |
| 403 | 403 · Forbidden | Reserved for future access rules — nothing serves it yet. |
| 503 | 503 · Maintenance | Shown on every page while maintenance mode is on. |
Design one
- Create a screen for the status, in Screens, and design it in the Besigner like any other screen — add your header/layout, a helpful message, and a link home.
- Assign it. Go to Setup and scroll to the Error pages card. Each status has its own picker — 404 · Not found, 401 · Members only, 403 · Forbidden, 503 · Maintenance — listing every screen on the site. Choose your screen in the matching picker.
Step 2 is the one that's easy to miss: designing a screen does not make it an error page on its own. Until it's picked in the Error pages card, the status renders the Built-in fallback page, which is what every picker is set to until you change it.
What the built-in fallback gives you
The fallback is not a blank error page. It renders under your site's theme and carries your logo, links to your site's public top-level pages, a search box (on the 404) and a footer — so a visitor who lands on a missing address can always get somewhere.
What it cannot do is show the header, navigation and footer you designed: those live in the screen you built them on, and on a 404 that screen is precisely the one that wasn't found. Its page links come from your published pages, and only the public ones — an unlisted, password-protected or members-only page never appears there.
Assigning a designed screen is still the better answer for any site that cares how this moment looks. The fallback is the floor beneath it.
Assigned error screens are automatically kept out of search results, so a 404 page can't itself turn up in a search.
Error screens are free
An assigned error screen doesn't count against your plan's screen allowance. Nothing about it is a page of your site: it renders on addresses that matched nothing, so it has no URL of its own — the same reason a collection's entry template doesn't count. See what counts against your screen allowance.
There's one thing to know, and it's the reason you don't need to publish the screen at all:
An error screen that is also published at its own address — a 404 screen you published
at /404 so you could preview it, say — is a page, so it counts like any other page
until you remove that address.
If you've already published one, the Error pages card says so and offers Remove address. Removing it frees the allowance slot and the screen carries on rendering for its status code, which is the only place it was ever meant to appear.
Tips
- Put a search box or navigation on your 404 so visitors can recover.
- Keep the 503 lightweight — it shows when the site is under maintenance.