Comments on: How To Customise Your 404 Page

By: tintedPixel

tintedPixel — Thu, 21 May 2009 21:07:42 +0000

@marty Indeed, webmasters should be using (best practices) that include proper redirects in .htaccess when pages are moved or become obsolete – though I don’t think its lazy. But creating a 404 that provides options that let the user get back on track seems like a good idea as well, don’t you think?

@yogomozilla Bingo! If the error pages don’t provide the correct response headers, the error becomes just another page. Basically defeating the purpose.

My 2 pennies.

By: CurlyB

CurlyB — Wed, 20 May 2009 21:17:19 +0000

I fail to see how the attack on Microsoft by Skweekah

Skweekah Says: “Oh no, it appears that youre using a Windows-based operating system…”

Will impres a user ending up with a 404 error because YOU have a problem on your website.
Blaming others is no answer.

By: dianemcken

dianemcken — Fri, 15 May 2009 15:46:29 +0000

I don’t like web sites that blame it on me that their page is not found. Saying “you seem a bit lost” to a potential customer doesn’t come across very well.

By: Stevie D

Stevie D — Fri, 15 May 2009 12:38:37 +0000

Out of interest, when you accidentally land on a 404 Error page, do you hit the back button without thinking any more about it? Or do you try some of the suggested links?

It depends how strong the information scent is. If I think the content will be on the site and I think the site architecture is sufficient that I will be able to find the correct page, I’ll persist. More often, I’ll go back to Google and do a site-restricted search, or just give up. That’s particularly true if it’s a generic 404 page that shows little interest in being helpful. Because let’s be honest, we all know that “cool URLs don’t change”, and if they haven’t bothered to map the old URL onto the new one, the chances are that they aren’t taking all that much care with the rest of the site either.

By: marty

marty — Thu, 14 May 2009 08:44:15 +0000

or be lazy and use .htaccess

By: Skweekah

Skweekah — Thu, 14 May 2009 05:00:22 +0000

Im going to be a stick in the mud here and say I dont like corny 404 pages. It’s just my opinion. But I still find this article of value and who knows, I may yet create my own corny 404 error page, like “Oh no, it appears that youre using a Windows-based operating system…”

By: yogomozilla

yogomozilla — Thu, 14 May 2009 02:59:49 +0000

“A 404 page is a HTTP standard response code”
- the page isn’t the response code – “404″ is the HTTP response code returned in the HTTP response headers from the remote server (http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html#sec10.4.5).
The page is just some content (possibly HTML) that happens to be served with a 404 response.

If you are syndicating content from other sites or working with web services getting a 404 response code in an HTTP request means that the content is no longer there. This can trigger error logging on your side so you can determine what has happened and take measures to get things working again.

The cardinal sin is to serve a “content not found page” with a 200 OK response. Yeah, it might say “content not found” in the response document but to a web service that 200 OK response means “yes the content is there” – even if the HTML in the response contains text suggesting that the content is not found.

The 404 response also tells Google and other search engines that the page no longer exists, meaning they should be removed from the search index.

Out of the examples you’ve given, the DigiGuru and Blue Daniel sites get it wrong by serving the 404 page as “200 OK” !fail!

; yogo

By: cranial-bore

cranial-bore — Wed, 13 May 2009 23:44:44 +0000

The risk with designing a great 404 page is that it might never be seen.

By: George Susini

George Susini — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:55:09 +0000

Very creative, Those are great ! I am not sure I would put sponsors on the page like CSS Scoop though, that would surely drive customers away thinking they hit a link site.

By: My220x

My220x — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:43:19 +0000

Great 404 error pages there, it’s nice to see something better then the default 404 ugly error page.