How To Customize Main Layout of Error Pages in cakePHP

To customize the contents of each cakePHP errors, you need to create the following pages in this folder /app/views/errors/
- error404.ctp
- missing_action.ctp
- missing_component_class.ctp
- missing_component_file.ctp
- missing_connection.ctp
- missing_controller.ctp
- missing_helper_class.ctp
- missing_helper_file.ctp
- missing_layout.ctp
- missing_model.ctp
- missing_scaffolddb.ctp
- missing_table.ctp
- missing_view.ctp
- private_action.ctp
- scaffold_error.ctp


But cakePHP is using /views/layouts/default.ctp as layout for these error pages like 404, missing controller, etc. To customize it, you need to create a file /app/app_error.php with the following contents:

class AppError extends ErrorHandler {
 
 function _outputMessage($template) {
  $this->controller->layout = 'error_template'; // /app/views/layouts/error_template.ctp
  parent::_outputMessage($template);
 }

}

And create a template file "error_template.ctp" in /app/views/layouts.

Hope this one helps.