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The most common errors seen in Ghost are 404 errors. Depending on the complexity of your theme, your routes file and other factors, errors can range from 4xx to 5xx. Read more about error status codes on MDN.

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Routes

Errors can be rendered on any route.

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Templates

The default template for an error is error.hbs, this will be used to render any error if there are no specific templates provided. Error classes, 4xx and 5xx can be captured using error-4xx.hbs and error-5xx.hbs respectively. For example a 404 error can be captured with error-4xx.hbs, and a 500 error can be captured with error-5xx.hbs. Specific errors can be captured by naming the template with the status code. For example 404 errors can be captured using error-404.hbs. If no custom error templates have been defined in the theme Ghost will use it’s default error template.

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Data

Error templates have access to the details of the error and the following attributes can be used:

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Error object attributes

  • {{statusCode}} — The HTTP status code of the error
  • {{message}} — The error message
  • {{errorDetails}} — An object containing further error details
    • {{rule}} — The rule
    • {{ref}} — A reference
    • {{message}} — Further information about the issue captured

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Helpers

Error templates shouldn’t use any theme helpers, with the exception of {{asset}}, or extend the default template, to further avoid the use of template helpers. Using theme helpers inside error templates can lead to misleading error reports. The only error template that is permitted to use helpers is the error-404.hbs template file.

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Example code

<!-- error.hbs -->

<!doctype html>
<!--[if (IE 8)&!(IEMobile)]><html class="no-js lt-ie9" lang="en"><![endif]-->
<!--[if (gte IE 9)| IEMobile |!(IE)]><!--><html class="no-js" lang="en"><!--<![endif]-->
  <head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html" charset="UTF-8" />
    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge,chrome=1" />

    <title>{{statusCode}} — {{message}}</title>

    <meta name="HandheldFriendly" content="True">
    <meta name="MobileOptimized" content="320">
    <meta name="viewport" content="user-scalable=no, width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1">
    <meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes" />

    <link rel="shortcut icon" href="{{asset "favicon.ico"}}">
    <meta http-equiv="cleartype" content="on">

    <link rel="stylesheet" href="{{asset "public/ghost.css" hasMinFile="true"}}"/>

  </head>
  <body>
    <main role="main" id="main">
      <div class="gh-app">
          <div class="gh-viewport">
              <div class="gh-view">
                <section class="error-content error-{{statusCode}} js-error-container">
                  <section class="error-details">
                    <section class="error-message">
                      <h1 class="error-code">{{statusCode}}</h1>
                      <h2 class="error-description">{{message}}</h2>
                      <a class="error-link" href="{{@site.url}}">Go to the front page →</a>
                    </section>
                  </section>
                </section>

                {{#if errorDetails}}
                    <section class="error-stack">
                        <h3>Theme errors</h3>

                        <ul class="error-stack-list">
                            {{#foreach errorDetails}}
                                <li>
                                    <em class="error-stack-function">{{{rule}}}</em>

                                    {{#foreach failures}}
                                        <p><span class="error-stack-file">Ref: {{ref}}</span></p>
                                        <p><span class="error-stack-file">Message: {{message}}</span></p>
                                    {{/foreach}}
                                </li>
                            {{/foreach}}
                        </ul>
                    </section>
                {{/if}}
              </div>
          </div>
      </div>
    </main>
  </body>
</html>