Question

When I deployed my project on a server, in certain circumstances, I get an error page that indicates I should create a custom error page. I was wondering how exactly I would implement this custom error page the server asks for to give me a precise and helpful message or preferably, how I would get the error to just display on the main page?

This is the error message I got below

Runtime Error

Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine. 

Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a <customErrors> tag within a "web.config" configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This <customErrors> tag should then have its "mode" attribute set to "Off".


<!-- Web.Config Configuration File -->

<configuration>
    <system.web>
        <customErrors mode="Off"/>
    </system.web>
</configuration>

Notes: The current error page you are seeing can be replaced by a custom error page by modifying the "defaultRedirect" attribute of the application's <customErrors> configuration tag to point to a custom error page URL.


<!-- Web.Config Configuration File -->

<configuration>
    <system.web>
        <customErrors mode="RemoteOnly" defaultRedirect="mycustompage.htm"/>
    </system.web>
</configuration>

Answer 1

You can show the actual errors by setting <customErrors mode="Off"/>, as the page clearly states.

However, that is not a good idea. Error messages can contain sensitive information, and can also help attackers find actual security holes in your site. (This is why ASP.Net doesn’t show errors by default)

Instead, you should use ELMAH to log all errors and report them to you.