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Building An 404 Error Page

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Today someone send me an email asking me for a page which he added to him bookmarks and today he tried to visit it and it was impossible to him. The page was not deleted, I just changed something in the permalink but he got an 404 Error Page. The 404 or Not Found error message is a HTTP standard response code indicating that the client was able to communicate with the server but either the server could not find what was requested, or it was configured not to fulfill the request and not reveal the reason why. 404 errors should not be confused with “server not found” or similar errors, in which a connection to the destination server cannot be made at all.

 

However this issue was good because it makes me notice that my 404 error page really sucks and I start to think how could I improve it…So I was thinking, in which circumstances someone get an 404 Error Page:404 error

 

  • When the url is written bad.
  • When the url is deleted from the site.
  • When the permalink is changed.

So I thought that is annoying when someone get a 404 message, the person is waiting to see the content and instead the person need to go back in the browser or verify the url. However that’s boring, so I will give you some tips to improve your 404 error page as I improved mine and give to the user a more pleasant sailing.

 

  1. Be friendly with the user: ok may be this could be considered stupid but not everybody knows what a 404 error is. Normally this kind of pages only show a single message: “404 Error – Not Found” or something like that. The experimented user know what it means, but if you are not an Internet lover, you surely won’t know what to do. In this case, you need to tell them what’s happening, a little message explaining it is sufficient for this.
  2. Include a search bar: if the user couldn’t find something, you need to help him to find it! how? if he is interested in something specific, he’ll want to find it, so what’s better than a search bar? a good and simply search bar could solve the problem, adding it to your 404 error page could help the users to find their wants.
  3. Offer personal assistance: exist the case that the user simply can’t find what he is looking for. In this case you should offer personal assistance, let them know that you are willing to help them finding what they want. Placing a link to the contact form will be enough in addition of a little note.
  4. Offer other posts: may be they can’t find what they want because simply the content does not exist on your blog. What should you do in this cases? offering other posts could be a nice way to attract them to your blog. I used a wordpress plugin called Customizable Post Listings for this, it let you to set random posts where you want with a simple php function: you can set the number of posts, the format of them, the author of them…inclusively you can set categories, so the plugin will only show random posts under these categories.

Building a 404 error page could be simple, but it’s very important for any website because depending of how is it configured, the users can leave or stay in the site when they can’t find what they want. :evil:

 

Happy blogging!

 


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6 Responses to “Building An 404 Error Page”

Comment by Andrew Banks | 29 Feb 2008 at 10:25

Don’t forget to make sure your 404 page is bigger than 512 bytes, otherwise users of the Google Toolbar will not see your 404 at all. Instead they will see a nice little page generated by the toolbar itself.

More info at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/404-pages-in-google-toolbar/

Andrew Banks’s last blog post..Dear BBC – I am not blind

 
Comment by marcspen | 29 Feb 2008 at 12:43

thanks for sharing…very informative :smile:

marcspen’s last blog post..Upcoming Festivals and Events all around USA

 
Comment by Mr. Javo | 29 Feb 2008 at 15:40

Andrew great tip, thanks for sharing it. I don’t knew about that feature of the google toolbar 5…

 
Comment by Labanon | 29 Feb 2008 at 16:27

Put your affiliate link is the best :)

p/s: nice to meet you mr.javo :D

Labanon’s last blog post..5 AdSense Mistake By Newbie

 
Comment by Personal Development Blog For Money | 2 Mar 2008 at 10:10

hmmmm, this is interesting…thanks for the info

Personal Development Blog For Money’s last blog post..Search Engine Punishing Clean Blogs

 

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