CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Summary
In the 'Debugging and Error Handling' settings it is possible to set a path to a custom fatal error template.

Surely the best approach to customizing the fatal error template is to override it using the custom template directory, the normal 'theming CiviCRM' approach: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Theming+CiviCRM

Otherwise we are encouraging putting custom files inside the civicrm module itself, which is very bad practice.

Proposed resolution
Deprecate(?) and then remove the custom fatal path setting

Remaining tasks
Discuss
Create an issue in JIRA
(Submit, review and commit pull request to deprecate the functionality?)
Submit, review and commit pull request to remove the functionality
Update docs: https://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/pages/editpage.action?pageId=86213553

Thanks JohnFF. I agree those cases don't seem likely:

a) Non-coders would still need to copy and edit the original 'fatal.tpl' file, and then upload it into the CiviCRM directory somewhere. This isn't much different to doing it the 'right' way - the same method but the file goes in a different place and you don't have to change a GUI setting.

b) This could still be achieved, by storing the template by another name (eg: fatal-april) and then renaming it as required. Admittedly not through the GUI though.

c) Text field: we do currently have these for the email templates. But I think most non-coders would find trying to edit a smarty template through the interface a bit baffling. We could just do a WYSIWYG box to edit the 'introduction' message, but like you say I don't think we'd gain much from that.