Something has gone terribly wrong – 404 Pages

Ideally, you should never see a 404 error page, but if you do, I hope it will be something interesting or entertaining. The 404 error occurs when a page is not found on a website. It’s mostly likely not due to any one of the mysterious server or Internet glitches that we blame everything else on. It’s because the web site owner has a link to a page that isn’t there. Maybe it used to be, or maybe it’s just a hastily typed link that they never tested.

Smashing Magazine has a nice 404 design gallery they posted back in January and Web Design Resources has a gallery as well.   Better still, go discover some of your own. Here’s a couple I’ve found.

Swiss Miss 404

Laughing Squid 404

Kottke 404

Failure is an option, or , how you fail has options. 404 pages are there because shit happens. Shit you didn’t plan. So make it a memorable failure. Something you can be proud of. Something that doesn’t look like a failure. Alternately, make it not-broken, have the page redirect to your home page, or make it a search page. Smashing Magazine’s solution is to direct you to their 404 Gallery. Just don’t make it a broken, boring, oh my God I fucked up page.

If you are using WordPress with a decent theme, you should be able to customize your own 404 template easily. Just go to Dashboard -> Appearance -> Editor -> 404 Template.

This entry was posted by one of one hundred trained flying monkeys employed to retrieve items from The Net with brass and steam powered prosthetic limbs on Monday, August 31st, 2009 at 1:43 pm and is filed here to tease your curious mind. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response below, or trackback from your own site.