add context to your django error pages

views.py

#
# by default, django 404 and 500 pages dont pass context to templates.
# as you almost *always* need context variables in your custom 
# 404/500 templates, you might need MEDIA_URL for example
#
# you need to create a custom view for errors and register it in your urls.py
#
# in urls.py add :
#
# handler500 = handler404 = views.server_error
#
#

def server_error(request, template_name='500.html'):
    from django.template import RequestContext
    from django.http import HttpResponseServerError
    t = get_template(template_name)
    return HttpResponseServerError(t.render(RequestContext(request)))

This old gist is still awesome. The beauty of HttpResponseServerError that doesn't seem to be documented (that I can see) is that it will still send emails to ADMINS if you use if for handler500.

exactly what i was after!

works great but you missed to import the loader from django.template, this way you can call loader.get_template correctly

Thank you for the snippet. Let me ask something:
What is the purpose of positional argument: template_name?
Since you define

handler500 = handler404 = views.server_error

Isn't this always going to be 500.html, in any case, whatever the exception?

As of Django 1.11 i get {TypeError}context must be a dict rather than RequestContext.