404 Error Page - Don’t Get the Page Itself to Be Even a Bigger Error
October 22nd, 2009 in Free Website Templates, ReviewsMany times in your life you have probably seen these petrifying 404 error pages which meant nothing but that you’ve lost your way surfing the web in your pursuance of certain objectives. The 404 error declares that the user’s request was able to communicate with the server, but the server couldn’t find what was requested. And that is probably the only useful information you would find reaching the “zero between fours” dead-end default pages.
TemplateMonster.com shares the point of view that it’s not always supposed to be that way. The 404 error pages must be your light out of the trouble but surely not a common state of “welcome, you’re in Deadlock”. 404 pages should contain helpful information for example Main Page or Site Map links or what’s better - widgets that endeavor to find the correct web page the user required. The visual representation of 404 pages is a question of substantial importance. It’s essential that when someone is looking for something for relatively long period of time without any success he gets rather annoyed with 404s but smart appealing visual elements might cheer him up.
Here are some more useful advices for you to think over your four-Oh!-fours:
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Set up your navigation system.
As it was mentioned above, you should provide alternatives for navigating user’s way out of a 404 error page. These could be widgets that find the correct web page, links to your home page, site map, help info, search tabs, assumption lists(e.g. “Perhaps you’ve meant”, “Maybe you would like to …” ), etc.
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The Medium is the Message.
Do not forget that even through 404 error page you are communicating with your visitors. Think over the message you would display.
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Be careful! Linguistic tips.
Displaying the list of probable errors never put misspelling error or any other assumptions, accusing the user of being sloppy or inattentive, first. Leave them to end your list and better present them in a rather smooth way.
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Brevi manu! (latin for ‘Brevity is the soul of wit’ ).
Stay informative and at the same time do not provide too much information. Give the users appropriate amount of suggestions to help them find their way out.
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Be user-friendly.
Spread some friendly mood on your ‘route 404′. Cross out sever “Error 404. Page Not Found” and change it for more amicable “Ooops!…” or “Sorry…” or else.
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Creativity is the key.
Think different! Find unconventional ideas to present your 404 error page. Thus you’ll make your visitors remember your page.
In case you’ve got really excited with this topic we recommend you to visit SmashingMagazine.com 404 error pages review (as well as part I of their best 404 pages review and part II which also rocks). Plus there’s a similar review of 60 best 404 error pages made by hongkiat.com - all these guys have done a great job of collecting these pages and popularising the “404 Error pages” topic. Here are some excellent examples of creative 404 error pages:
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By the way this one is the only Flash-based 404 error page we’ve seen. And it looks great!
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And as usually we finish this post with the exciting news from TemplateMonster.com. We proudly present you our collection of extraordinary 404 error pages - available for instant download, absolutely for FREE. Take a good care of your visitors with our marvelous 404 error page templates created especially for your website!
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Click the image to go to download page
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They’re nice, huh? And yes, they’re available to you absolutely for free - download them right now and apply them to your 404 error pages!
October 22nd, 2009 at 3:31 am
Is this free for this reason u hve made those websites for no longer any uses. Please try to give some good and perfect web template…..
October 22nd, 2009 at 3:39 am
LOL, you was right, sarmistha biswas !!
October 22nd, 2009 at 3:59 am
Dammit, learn English you commenting dorks!
especially you sarmi-whatever… Besides, I believe these free 404 templates are made that way because they’re meant to be free. take a look at other designs from template monster and you’ll see they have sh*tloads of good designs.
October 22nd, 2009 at 5:02 am
Interesting to see that everywhere those “use english right” insultments by college boys or girls come up, people that have nothing else to say, lol. Even more interesting to see that those “high english individuals”, need to use insulting phrases at all, even have to use profanity to come with a standpoint and even more, that they always just justify the one who really needs some advice, as sorry, a 404 page should never ever include the number 404, but show the user who does not even know what error this is, a page that explains the case without being technical and never the 404 itself.
That is the reason why americans are seen as they want to be seen, people who only open their mouth to leave something degrading, while they seem not to see that their own little existence is only a hyped up self-apocalypse literally leaving them standing in bushes alone soon, while the rest of the western and open minded world forms a new own society that does not need talkers like us people are, best example is Obama. First you all love him, now you hate him, because you followed little mass media marketing like a nice designed blue shiny homepage with some preteen wisdom message “Yes, we can” and “Change”. Not even the fact that he is the first black prez and Pelosi the first female speaker in the house is satisfaction for even colored americans no more, since there was immediate turnover and the us girls still wonna get more, as usual, only stop to beg when the mouth is full as a gag. Now please, do not repeat the same college reply like you did before, like “this is off topic”, well this is not, your attitude will lead to a “404 Page” that will not be as nice as the ones presented here, ladies and gentlemen.
October 22nd, 2009 at 6:12 am
These templates are cute! Thank you for offering them.
Sincerely,
A person well-versed in English who voted for Obama and still likes him. =)
October 22nd, 2009 at 6:48 am
you’re so ame, dr deth.. and the worst is that you truly believe your own words.. i’d have felt sorry for you, if you weren’t ame, but as many people now, all we’re waiting for, is to see you guys going down the drain.
now back to more serious matter, TemplateMonsters has been providing with quality designs for long time now, and these 404s are no exception. I believe sarmistha biswas is surely a little young and wild, that’s all. no biggie about it, we’ve all been there before
October 22nd, 2009 at 6:49 am
Please, go and save your ass first, and live the rest of the world in peace. You got enough problems in your country to start messing around some other. Thank you.
October 22nd, 2009 at 7:06 am
DrDeth - you reveal your own pathetic abilities at English by not recognizing the difference between the possessive “YOUR” and the concatenated indicative “YOU’RE”.
October 22nd, 2009 at 7:23 am
OMG… bet templatemonster didn´t expect their small but albeit genereous offer, to trigger a political and linguistic mini flame war like this… no wonder there´s no peace in this world.
I like the templates anyway AND they gave me a nice idea for something else I could do… and that my friends, is something that money can not buy
October 22nd, 2009 at 7:24 am
you evil, amUSforObama, going all mental over dr.dreth :p
on a sidenote, the swf 404 page is really neat! (y)
October 22nd, 2009 at 8:08 am
None of you offer is working..every times want download nothing happen..damm!
October 22nd, 2009 at 8:42 am
Andy, please make sure you have unchecked the newsletter subsription checkbox (that may cause the problem in case you are already a subscriber). There’s nothing else I can think of that may cause the problem you’ve mentioned. I’ve checked all of the download links a minute ago, everything works just fine.
October 22nd, 2009 at 8:56 am
Ok, guys, ‘nativeforeigner’ is totally right - we could never expect that 404 error pages topic would cause this kind of discussion. Listen, let’s just forget this whole agressive linguistic thing, okay? Otherwise Barack Obama himself might soon be here to comment on this
To be serious, this is not the best way to improve the web - and improving it is what we all want, right? So let’s concentrate on that.
October 22nd, 2009 at 2:12 pm
LOL! I get a 404 page error when trying the download sent to me…no actual zip or files…not even the page I’m trying to get is displayed! It’s just a white page saying “404 Not Found
nginx/0.5.35″ Thanks anyway, hopefully it works later. These are cute!
October 22nd, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Stumbled across this one today! Ha!!!…
“Oh Noez! You are seeing this page because you broke the Internets”
http://www.myfreelife.com/404
October 23rd, 2009 at 12:32 am
Páginas de error 404…
Algunas de las páginas de error 404 más curiosas….
October 23rd, 2009 at 3:24 am
This is for the English and non-English speaking people here. Try acronyms like WTF….. as in WTF is all this disingenuous discussion over a stupid giveaway? In other words What The F#$@%??? Yeah, the 404 pages are pretty stupid unless you want to change them for every occasion instead of fixing the problem that is causing the 404 in the first place. All I can say about this freebie and all the American/Anti-American dialogue is………WTF????
October 23rd, 2009 at 3:44 am
well i find those templates pretty good…
ps: Dr Deth, la France t’emmerde…
October 23rd, 2009 at 5:02 am
You guys are AWESOME. Sorry to hear that you’ve been hit by Digg Effect and went down.
Hopefully you’ll be OK now.
P.S. The English discussion is so funny
October 23rd, 2009 at 5:26 am
guys, most 404s showed up above are simply.. pictures! just open the 404 page, right click and save the pic! you believed TM will deliver it to you in a nice ready-to-use package, and all for free? :p
October 23rd, 2009 at 5:29 am
Sad thing - I’m getting a 404 error when I try to download - BUMMER!
October 23rd, 2009 at 6:18 am
Mr. Freeze, actually we do give them away for free - including the .PSD source files (go ahead and check it if you don’t believe me). So even if you want to apply the 404 page as an image (which by the way is not the best variant) you’d better use the PSD sources - the images presented here in this post are low-res
October 23rd, 2009 at 6:20 am
Cyeda, please try to download it again - but make sure you use a new download link, just go to the 404 error template page, type in your name again and uncheck the newsletter subscription checkbox - the new link will be provided and you will be able to download the free item.
October 23rd, 2009 at 8:14 am
This forum could use a bit of moderation to prevent silly flame wars. It’s just unprofessional and immature to carry on the way this is going. To the Blog owner, time to archive this one.
October 23rd, 2009 at 8:47 am
well, Alex, thanks for the input and the native files!
Long Live TM! :p
October 23rd, 2009 at 10:39 am
I’m happy to see lots of nationalities are interested in the works of TM. So just read between the lines…
PS: nice 404 design TM!
October 23rd, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Missed out on http://www.freetubetv.net/404
Not interactive but neat effect.
October 24th, 2009 at 3:22 am
[quote]DrDeth - you reveal your own pathetic abilities at English by not recognizing the difference between the possessive “YOUR” and the concatenated indicative “YOU’RE”.[/quote]
Dr Who used the correct choice of the possesive “YOUR”. Intersting how you accuse him of incorrect English, and you got it wrong yourself…
October 24th, 2009 at 10:31 am
OMGWTFLOL… what’s up with the Grammar Police trolling the Template Monster goofy-ass Halloween Custom 404 page?
Get a life d00ds… if you have that much free time, try creating your own custom 404s. You’re the ones with the problem, not the folks trying to communicate in English via Google-translator
October 24th, 2009 at 10:44 am
Thanks for the Saturday morning entertainment!
And thanks for the freebies!
October 24th, 2009 at 10:51 am
http://minitodo.pl/404
October 24th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
It has come to my attention that people reading this forum may be enjoying themselves. Please refrain from using any exclamation marks when posting.
October 24th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
I didn’t know Template Monster was making posts of collections of things now too, this is really cool! I also really like the new blog design, gotta love halloween
October 26th, 2009 at 12:39 am
Very nice 404 pages. Can you also guide how to create custom design 404 pages? I can design a page but don’t know how to set it as 404 error page.
October 26th, 2009 at 8:18 am
Finally today i can download it..thanks everyone
October 26th, 2009 at 10:23 am
I see a lot of people writing `404`, but I don’t think it’s useful to the average user, and maybe it’s a good idea to remove it and leave only the useful stuff.
October 27th, 2009 at 6:09 am
these are really good designs … thx for the collection.
October 27th, 2009 at 11:04 am
Thank you for providing these templates free of charge.
I didn’t vote for Obama, for reasons that are painfully honest to most by now, and I could care less what the rest of the world thinks of us. America is what it is, a democratic republic that believes a threat to freedom anywhere today is a threat to freedom everywhere.
October 27th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Matthew 24
35 Heaven and earth will disappear, but my words will never disappear.
36 “However, no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. Only the Father knows.
37 “When the Son of Man returns, it will be like it was in Noah’s day. 38 In those days before the flood, the people were enjoying banquets and parties and weddings right up to the time Noah entered his boat. 39 People didn’t realize what was going to happen until the flood came and swept them all away. That is the way it will be when the Son of Man comes.
40 “Two men will be working together in the field; one will be taken, the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding flour at the mill; one will be taken, the other left.
42 “So you, too, must keep watch! For you don’t know what day your Lord is coming. 43 Understand this: If a homeowner knew exactly when a burglar was coming, he would keep watch and not permit his house to be broken into. 44 You also must be ready all the time, for the Son of Man will come when least expected.
This is a template site. does any of this matter when the time comes. ask for forgiveness and save your soul. eternity is too long to get it wrong.
October 27th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Very nice thread, never thought about 404 pages to be so deep.. i think i ‘ll go make some too..
November 8th, 2009 at 4:21 am
Blizzard’s new 404 is pretty keen: http://us.blizzard.com/doh?rhtml=y