... this post is an 'in progress' topic and it will be posted over on tinyportal.net when it's finished.
Comments and suggestions are welcome. 
This has been posted to tinyportal.net
-------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a short and simple two step how-to for using your TinyPortal Article system to set up a custom 404 error page. As we all know the default 404 error pages are rather bland and boring so when Mick posted his '
[Tip] Create a 404 Not Found Page' back in 2010 I was all over it and made a nice little page for my site and was well pleased with it.
As Mick said in his post:
Your visitors may stumble into a 404 "Not found" page on your website for a variety of reasons:
* A mistyped URL, or a copy-and-paste mistake
* Broken or truncated links on web pages or in an email message
* Moved or deleted content
Confronted by a 404 page, they may then attempt to manually correct the URL, click the back button, or even navigate away from your site.
This code will actually show your forum and let them know that your forum does exists and make them to at least try again.
Then fast forward to this January when my site was reopened after it being off line for all of 2013. That's when it was discovered that my 404 error page no longer worked. So after some research this is what I came up with.
Please note that while this worked well for me, care should be taken to do backups of your database and the files involved in case you have a problem of some kind.
... be sure to use the information below for help in editing files.1/ First, make an article with the content that you would like to be displayed whenever someone pulls up a 404 error page on your site.
... this is how my current article looks; (you can see the full page
HERE.)
2/ Next in your sites public html folder look for the '.htaccess' file.
... backup, backup, backup. 
(see the link below)
Adjust the code below to fit your new 404 error article and add the resulting code to the end of your .htaccess file.
ErrorDocument 404 /yourforumname/index.php?page=yourarticlepagenumberNow you can test your newly installed 404 error page by entering a broken address for your forum into your browser.
For mine it looks like this:
http://www.ourfamilyforum.org/FamilyForum/index.php ... my forums address.http://www.ourfamilyforum.org/FamilyFor ... broken address that will take you to my 404 error page.-----------------------------------------------
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Useful Links:1/
Google Product Forums › Webmaster Central › ... in this topic 'ets' gave me some spot on help is sorting out the code for my :htaccess file.
2/ Need an FTP file utility?
My favorite is FileZilla.If you do not have a FTP program (or don't know how to use one) you use your hosting's control panel (such as File Manager in your cPanel) to download and upload the file. You can even use it to directly edit the file, if needed...
be very cautious when using this method!3/ Any time you do anything to your forum there is one thing that you should make part of your routine, like:
Backup... Backup... Backup!When editing a file I generally do this;
Make a temp folder on my desktop...
Open the site with the FileZilla FTP utility...
Download a copy of the file in question and place it in the temp folder...
Then download a fresh copy into my editor and edit away...
Go back to the site and rename the existing online copy of the file to something else, like, old_filename.php...
Then upload the edited version of the file.
When doing several files I wait until all of them have been edited so that they can all be uploaded at the same time.
If everything is OK then I'm finished.
If its all messed up I just delete the bad file that was uploaded, rename the good one to the correct file name and the forum is back to normal.
