<\/p>\n
\n
Ever encountered a “404 error” message on a site? Also known as a “page
\nnot found” error, it can really annoy visitors. Some of these folks may never
\nreturn to your site. If you don’t handle these people with care, you could drive
\nimportant traffic away from your site. Now, you really don’t want to do that,
\ndo you?\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Links go “missing” for a whole bunch of reasons:<\/p>\n
But that’s no reason to allow visitors to leave disappointed! Every site must
\nhave a custom “404 page” that tries to help people find what they
\nthought they’d find. Experienced web developers (of whom there are lots on the thelist) know that such a page is essential for a large, high-traffic site. Or at least they
\nought to. If that’s the case, why do some of the most popular sites on the Internet
\nnot have one? Here are some examples…<\/p>\n
… and still more well-known sites have practically useless 404 error pages.
\nSome examples are:<\/p>\n
Very few sites actually trap the URL causing the problem and Don’t drive people away. Here are some ideas for designing more user-friendly error pages::<\/p>\n Using some or all of the above measures will spread that “they really Are there any decent 404 pages out there? Yes. Here are a few: <\/p>\n More resources<\/b><\/p>\n Ever encountered a “404 error” message on a site? Also known as a “page not found” error, it can really annoy visitors. Some of these folks may never return to your site. If you don’t handle these people with care, you could drive important traffic away from your site. Now, you really don’t want to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nallow people to enter it into a form without copying, pasting, pressing the
\nBack button to check the referrering page, etc. Why is that so hard? Instead of asking questions
\nlike “Write to us, telling us what URL caused the problem, where you came from,
\nwhat operating system and browser you’re using”, why not just sniff all this
\nthrough a server-side script and use that info? See: http:\/\/www.ask.com\/AnErrorPage.html<\/a>
\nas an annoying example.<\/p>\n\n
\nfind this page for you. Try these options:” sounds a lot better than “Error.
\nMissing page”.<\/li>\n
\nthe error page. This will help those users that might have been just looking
\nfor a particular section, say, the “Services” page. <\/li>\n
\nthere on the error page. It’s good to try and minimize the number of clicks
\nfor a visitor.
\nOffer a link to a guided tour (if you have one) or the “About the site” page.<\/li>\n
\nautomatically send an email message to the Webmaster of the site, notifying
\nhim\/her of i) The URL with the error and ii) The referring page<\/li>\n
\nhe\/she was looking for something specific. For a particularly nice touch,
\npre-fill the “Missing page:” field with the URL of the page that caused the
\nerror, and the “Referring page:” field with the URL of page they came from.<\/li>\n
\nstop at the autoresponder (you do have one, don’t you?). Write back to them,
\ntell them how to find what they were looking for, and do it within 24 hours
\nof the error. Prompt customer service is so rare on the Web that it will really
\nbe appreciated by your visitors.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
\ncare about me” feeling amongst your site’s visitors, and we all know that
\ntrust is a scarce commodity on the Web.<\/p>\n\n
\n(Very nice. I like the informal, reassuring tone of this page) <\/li>\n
\n(Includes a site search, site map, etc.) <\/li>\n
\n(employs most of the techniques I’ve mentioned)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n
\nabout setting up custom 404 error pages on Windows NT<\/a>. If you’re on NT,
\nread this.<\/li>\n
\nASP script<\/a> that traps the referring page and sends a mail to the Webmaster
\nabout the error. You could modify this to log it to a database instead.<\/li>\n
\nabout doing the same for Apache<\/a> on Unix\/Linux.<\/li>\n
\ndevoted to just 404 errors. Highly recommended. Includes examples of good
\n404 pages, whacky pages, instructional pages, etc.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"