What’s worse than a user receiving an Error 404 page? Receiving an Error 404 page that isn’t helpful. What does your 404 page look like, is it the default one? If so, you may want to add a few things to help your next Error 404 page visitor.

Here are a few 404 pages that are actually useful.

By default, your Pligg 404 page will look something like this:

Not exactly all that helpful.

Heres one that is much better:

The second one is better for a couple of reasons.

1. It provides a search box – to make it easier to do a  search.
2. It lists recent submissions – in the hopes that one of them will interest your user.
3. Display the popular keywords – much like the search box, the user can try to find what they need by subject
4. Homepage link – in the first example, it suggested the user should return to the home page, but there was no active link in the line for the user to click, now there is.
5. Contact form – again, in the first example it asks the user to conact the site to report an error, but where is the contact form link?

These are just a couple of things you can do.  You could also, add the Contact Form to the page so the user didn’t have to click a link, but chances are the user won’t do the form anyways, thats I why I added it to the end of the page.

Your focus should be on keeping the user there by displaying submission titles and a tag cloud.  Give them something to click instead of clicking the back button.

I have included the files I used to make this page as a download.  You can use them or change them in anyway.

You can view the improved 404 page at FAQPAL.

Post a link to your 404 page and show us what yours looks like or post some suggestions.

  404 Error Page files (2.6 KiB, 509 hits)

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• pligg 404