Custom Error pages

March 20th, 2004, 2:57 am

Hello all, im looking to get some ideas on what people put on their custom error pages.

So if you think you have got a good one, post it on here.

Cheers

Tone

March 20th, 2004, 8:46 am

Check out this website:

http://www.plinko.net/404/ (404 Research lab). They've got some great 404 pages (and a 404 email list, too!)

I really like their 404 page

March 20th, 2004, 9:32 am

hmmm, i like it a lot, and i think i'll be designing something like that soon....

March 20th, 2004, 11:31 am

http://www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ found this one which is quite funny lol,

March 20th, 2004, 1:01 pm

I had someone design a 404 page for my site: http://www.xenolth.biz

March 20th, 2004, 1:18 pm

Hi i just finished making one for my site http://www.ghostorbsociety.com/404error

What do you think of it?

Tone

March 20th, 2004, 9:09 pm

Tone2k11 wrote:

Hi i just finished making one for my site http://www.ghostorbsociety.com/404error

What do you think of it?

Nicely done. A little suggestion: most people won't bother to send you an email, so try making a simple form that the user can fill out in a couple seconds. Another of my sites: http://www.naudusfamily.net/filenotfound/ (still under construction) provides me with good feedback (visitors are more likely to fill out a form than send email)

To get a script to process your form, grab a generic free one from http://php.resourceindex.com or http://hotscripts.com.

March 22nd, 2004, 11:13 am

If you have PHP your 404's should also make a quick record of what URL was not found and where the user came from (if they clicked a link).

The web stats on my host tell you the top 10 not-found URLs. This is a good start I suppose, but usually the top 10 missing URLs are robots.txt (I supose i could make one to solve that eh! )

March 22nd, 2004, 1:05 pm

FYI: Robots.txt is the first thing that search engines check for when they spider your site (robots.txt can contain special instructions for search engine robots and spiders, such as which pages not to index, etc.)

March 22nd, 2004, 3:32 pm

(yeah I forgot to mention that for ppl that never heard of it) One day I'll look up exatly what commands you can give the robots, till then, I just let them roam!

March 26th, 2004, 6:26 am

Doesn't PHP allow you to report a list of URLs that have similar spellings to the one entered?

I would have thought (barring humourous ones) that the most useful error 404 you could write would do the following:

Record the URL that the user was trying to reach
Record the URL that they came from
Email both to you so you know there is a missing link on the site
Give them a list of similar files that exist.

Although possibly not good if you have lots of traffic and a broken link (or the broken link is from another site). Just written a mail bomb to yourself lol.

Well thats me not winning the prize for well-thought-out comment.

March 27th, 2004, 6:39 am

I wa thinking almost exactly the same but not emailing - just record to a file or database, and chech up on it regularly!

Plus a search facility can be added, and if the person came through google, you can extract the keywords they searched from the referer URL.

More ideas on - ALA: Perfect 404

March 27th, 2004, 1:29 pm

How about something like these:

+ Four-Oh-Four Error:
Okay. I admit it. I f*cked up.


+ Four-Oh-Four Error:
What? Don't you like these pages?


+ The page cannot be displayed
The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. The Web site might be trying to p!$$ you off, or you may need to get outside once in a while.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please try the following:

Click the Refresh button, or go away. Note: Clicking 'Refresh' never, ever works.

If you typed the page address in the Address bar, make sure that it is not spelled correctly. That always helps, eh?



Cannot find server, DNS Error, or someone doesn't know how to code a hyperlink.
Internet Explorer













LOL, I made up all of them, but I'm so generous, you don't need to credit me if you use the ideas. Wow!

March 27th, 2004, 1:46 pm

um, i would like to encourage the people to stay at my site, not be rude and scare them away lol :-/

Well done for making them up though, lol

Like your site btw, very colorful

March 28th, 2004, 1:56 am

is it possible to make custom error pages if you do not have htaccess?