Friendly 404 Error Messages
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Articles 5 Tips to Make Your 404 Page More Usable March 17th, 2009 Written by Matthew Kammerer Chief Executive Officer, Cofounder Published on March 17th, 2009 In this post I will outline 5 ways to make your 404 error page more usable. In some cases, a 404 page may be the first impression a visitor has of your site. Why
404 Error Message Text
not make it a good one? These steps can easily lead to a better user experience if 404 error page template implemented and should be a part of every web site you develop. 1. Ditch the Default Customization of your 404 page is the first step when error 404 text message prank improving your error page. The default error message is not helpful. In most cases, landing on a page that results in a standard 404 Error means that your viewers will only have the option to return to the previous loaded page. If your
Best 404 Page
user lands on a 404 page from an outside link, then you have no chance of retaining the visitor unless they visit your domain directly. Do not expect users to put forth this much effort if you have not put forth the effort to make your page more user friendly. Customization is easy and can make a world of difference. There are guides on creating your own custom 404 page for services such as WordPress and Apache. 2. Keep it familiar Yahoo! keeps it's 404 Message short
Error Page Template Bootstrap
and simple, but it is evident that the page is a part of Yahoo. Sometimes, it just makes the most sense to start back from square one. When designing your 404 page you want to keep the same basic structure as the rest of your site. When a user lands on a 404 page that looks completely different from the site they may wonder if they have left your site completely. At the very least, keep a recognizable banner or logo that a viewer can instantly connect with in your 404 Error Message. Simply seeing a familiar graphic will be reassuring enough for most. 3. Keep it Basic Your 404 page should be kept basic so that you do not intimidate your user; the fact that your user has stumbled onto an error will be overwhelming enough for them. The main goal of your 404 page is to direct your user to the page they were looking for as quickly as possible. Digital Photography School Blog is quick to connect users that land on a 404 page with the most recent content posted at the site. This goal needs to be met in a way that will benefit a broad audience, but again, too many options will quickly make the page ineffective. Offering links to the most used pages on a site is one way to ensure you'll help a wide number of users: For some sites this may simply mean including the primary navigation, while on blogs and larger sites it may mean including links to the mo
Was it the website? What do you do now? Article Continues Below 57 comments Share this on Translations Italian Russian Welcome to 404 error page html code the world of the Error 404 page. You’ve requested a page — either
404 Page Not Found
by typing a URL directly into the address bar or clicking on an out-of-date link and you’ve found yourself 500 error page in the middle of cyberspace nowhere. A user-friendly website will give you a helping hand while many others will simply do nothing, relying on the browser’s built-in ability to explain what http://www.uxbooth.com/articles/5-tips-to-make-your-404-page-more-usable/ the problem is. We can do better than that, can’t we? I won’t go into details about how you set your server up to deliver a custom 404 page — instead, I’ll refer you to these articles: Creating a Custom 404 Error Page (4 Guys From Rolla) Creating Custom Error Messages in Apache (4WebHelp) I will, however, suggest strategies for building a custom http://alistapart.com/article/perfect404 404 page that makes the most of an otherwise lost cause. To get started, we need to examine the most common reasons that people find themselves on a 404 page: a mis-typed URL (or an out-of-date bookmark/favourite) a search-engine link that is out-of-date an internal broken link that the webmaster hasn’t noticed They all amount to the same thing, but they need to be handled slightly differently — the 404 message needs to be customized for each eventuality. There are some tricks that you can employ that apply to all scenarios, but my first suggestion is simple… Don’t point the finger Tell them what went wrong, by all means, but don’t admonish the user, even if you know it’s their fault! The phrases, “might have” and “possibly” are good ones to use here. Don’t get off on the wrong foot with this visitor to your site — you might yet turn this problem around. 404 Must-haves As well as the “something went wrong” text, you should ensure that your error page has the following: A link to the site map (if you have one) and the home page. Thi
messages are as bad as they can be even forgetting to use the 404 status code in the HTTP header. It is high time to reconsider if the job is better http://www.xmlplease.com/error404 left to an improved default 404 provided by web servers where it naturally belongs. 1. Design for error 2. Hypertext Transfer Protocol 3. Code 404 must be returned 4. Default 404 in web servers 5. Friendly HTTP http://www.404errorpages.com/ error messages in Internet Explorer 6. Microsoft's "custom" and "friendly" 404 7. The friendly 404 in IE7 beta 8. The short and the expanded error message 9. Brain storm for a good 40410. Google's 404 error 404 error message11. Jakob Nielsen's 404 error message12. IBM's 404 error message13. PHP's 404 error message14. Microsoft's 404 error message15. Yahoo's 404 error message16. Ebay's 404 error message17. Wikipedia's 404 error message18. W3C's 404 error message19. Evolt's 404 error message20. Alistapart's 404 error message21. Amazon's 404 error message22. XmlPlease's 404 error message23. Common errors in 404 messages24. Don't make smart error messages25. Resources26. Conclusion27. Appendix27.1 Revision history27.1.1 404 error message 2007-01-2927.1.2 2006-07-2127.1.3 2006-07-1727.1.4 2003-05-171. Design for errorWhen you have used the web for some time, you know that an URL does not always lead you to what you expected and that links can be broken. Just like telephone numbers. No big deal. You don't need to hear "we are sorry", or to be presented for a long list of possible causes or a similar long list of suggestions for how to proceed.We want to recognize that a "404 Not Found" has happened as fast as possible. It is not necessarily better to make a less technical message. It will probably be longer and also less clear at a glance. We want to correct the typo or mis-spelling in the address line of the browser right away, if that is the problem, or to go to the homepage of the URL not found in a split second, and to proceed from there.The proper way to explore a website is from the homepage. It is better for your learning process to get acquainted with the homepage and how it relates to sitemaps and search engine than to become best friends with an error message.2.
asks for a page that’s simply not available on your site. The reason for this is that there may be a link on your site that was wrong or the page might have been recently removed from the site. As there is no web page to display, the web server sends a page that simply says "404 Page not found". The 404 error message is an HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) standard status code. This "Not Found" response code indicates that although the client could communicate to the server, the server could not find what was requested or it was configured not to fulfill the request. The 404 "Not Found" error is not the same as the "Server Not Found" error which you see whenever a connection to the destination server could not be established at all. The default 404 error page as shown on Internet Explorer is given below. HTTP Status Code Whenever you visit a web page, your computer will request data from a server through HTTP. Even before the requested page is displayed in your browser, the web server will send the HTTP header that has the status code. The status code provides information about the status of the request. A normal web page gets the status code as 200. But we do not see this as the server proceeds to send the contents of the page. It’s only when there is an error, we see the status code 404 Not Found. Origin of Status Codes As a part of the HTTP 0.9 specifications, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) established HTTP status codes in 1992. Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the web and the first web browser in 1990, defined the status codes. List of Status Codes A brief overview of HTTP status codes is given below. Code Meaning Description 100 Continue Confirms the client about the arrival of the first part of the request and informs to continue with the rest of the request or ignore if the request has been fulfilled 101 Switching Protocols Informs the client about the server switching the protocols to that specified in the Upgrade message header field during the current connection. 200 OK Standard response for successful requests 201 Created Request fulfilled and new resource created 202 Accepted Request accepted, but not yet processed 203 Non-Authoritative Information Returned meta information was not the definitive set from the origin server. 204 No Content Request succeeded without requiring the return of an entity-body 205 Reset Content Request succeeded but require resetting of the doc