The Bloglines Plumber is back:

If I ever saw the Bloglines Plumber walking down the street, I think I'd recognize him after seeing him so many times this past fall. He has been in hiding lately, but made a big time return earlier this week.

This got me thinking about 404 error pages. The plumber isn't a 404 error, but he inspired me. 404's are the errors you receive when you reach a page that does not exist. Here is an example of a fairly common 404 error you've probably come across before:

The page cannot be found

The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

Please try the following:

If you typed the page address in the Address bar, make sure that it is spelled correctly.

Open the yourdomain.com home page, and then look for links to the information you want.

Click the Back button to try another link.

HTTP 404 - File not found
Internet Information Services

Technical Information (for support personnel)

More information:
Microsoft Support

Pretty ugly, right? Why not provide something a bit more inviting and user friendly than this for your visitors? Why not create a custom 404 error page that uses your web site's look and feel along with a message on how they can find what they're looking for.

Three Valuable 404 Error Page Features

1. Template that's consistent with the rest of the site.
2. Site map or tag cloud.
3. Search box.
4. What would you add to this list?

How to Create a Custom 404 Error Page

That depends on what type of server your website is hosted on and how it's set up. 404 Research Lab has instructions for most common servers. However, you may need to talk to your web host to find out how to do it for your site.

Brendan, that looks great. It gives people some great choices on where they can go other than the back button on their browser.

Comments

1. Posted by: brendan on April 13, 2006 3:58 AM:

Ed,

Adding code to do an automated search for possibly related content is a great start.

For example, anyone who manages to strike a 404 when accessing content on my site will find a number of posts related to the original request (for example if a post title has a name change, or the URI has been modified).

I also present the last few posts, search and the tag cloud.

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The page cannot be found

HTTP 404 - File not found Internet Information Services

HTTP 404 - File not found
Internet Information Services