Concerning the error repsonse codes do the following:
in httpd.conf
find "ErrorDocument"
default settings
Customizable error response (Apache style)
these come in three flavors
#
1) plain text
#ErrorDocument 500 "The server made a boo boo.
n.b. the single leading (") marks it as text, it does not get output
#
2) local redirects
#ErrorDocument 404 /missing.html
to redirect to local URL /missing.html
#ErrorDocument 404 /cgi-bin/missing_handler.pl
N.B.: You can redirect to a script or a document using server-side-includes.
#
3) external redirects
#ErrorDocument 402 http://some.other-server.com/subscription_info.html
N.B.: Many of the environment variables associated with the original
request will not be available to such a script.
as to own headers you can use SSI includes (.shtml).