Creating a custom 404 page for your GitHub Pages site

You can display a custom 404 error page when people try to access nonexistent pages on your site.

Who can use this feature?

GitHub Pages is available in public repositories with GitHub Free and GitHub Free for organizations, and in public and private repositories with GitHub Pro, GitHub Team, GitHub Enterprise Cloud, and GitHub Enterprise Server.

  1. On GitHub Enterprise Server, navigate to your site's repository.

  2. Navigate to the publishing source for your site. For more information, see "Configuring a publishing source for your GitHub Pages site."

  3. Above the list of files, select the Add file dropdown menu, then click Create new file.

    Alternatively, you can click in the file tree view on the left.

    Screenshot of the main page of a repository. Above the list of files, a button, labeled "Add file," is outlined in dark orange. In the file tree view of the repository, a button with a plus sign icon is also outlined in dark orange.

  4. In the file name field, type 404.html or 404.md.

  5. If you named your file 404.md, add the following YAML front matter to the beginning of the file:

    ---
permalink: /404.html
---

  6. Below the YAML front matter, if present, add the content you want to display on your 404 page.

  7. Click Commit changes...

  8. In the "Commit message" field, type a short, meaningful commit message that describes the change you made to the file. You can attribute the commit to more than one author in the commit message. For more information, see "Creating a commit with multiple authors."

  9. Below the commit message fields, decide whether to add your commit to the current branch or to a new branch. If your current branch is the default branch, you should choose to create a new branch for your commit and then create a pull request. For more information, see "Creating a pull request."

    Screenshot of a GitHub pull request showing a radio button to commit directly to the main branch or to create a new branch. New branch is selected.

  10. Click Commit changes or Propose changes.

Further reading