It was a while ago that I first read ALA’s article on how to craft a more useful 404 error message. Yesterday implementing a more useful 404 hit the top of my to-do list. In the end I found a perfect off-the-peg PHP solution from Harold Bakker; “Mail on 404“. Does just what I need, in PHP. Grrreat.

Update…

Couple of additions:

Add the time zone

Insert date_default_timezone_set('Europe/Madrid') ; into the PHP block Just above $today = date("j F Y, G:i:s"); to set the time zone (a requirement for PHP5 I believe)

Add a recipient switch

I’ve added a recipient switch (not actually a PHP Switch but a bunch of if elseif else statements) to this so that the email message is sent to different e-mail accounts according to the server host name. This keeps my dev tests and snafus away from clogging up the client’s email.

Last updated on 5th September 2018