Many 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:

• 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.

• 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.

1. 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.

2. 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.

• 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.

• 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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Today is the last day of our August hosting promos but there’s no sign of sadness of any kind because a) the monster 30% discount is still active today and b) we have added a beautiful free hosting website template available for instant download. Just like the previously added free business template this one is also produced with a special approach - it’s of premium graphic design and XHTML/CSS validated. Take a look:

And - just as before - you may use this free hosting template for your own website (or someone else’s website if that’s what you want). Plus you are free to customize this template in whatever way that you want because .PSD files are also delivered. Just make sure you don’t resell it - that’d be unfair, right? Any other use is allowed and welcomed!

Ok, we assume that you are all still impressed and overwhelmed with yesterday’s free Twitter background. But the bursts of our generosity have got no mercy for the ones overwhelmed and therefore you should prepare yourself for even a bigger strike!

Today it’s the FREE premium business website template - with all of the source files available (including the PSD graphic sources) and fully customizable. You are free to download it right now and use it as a website design for your own or your company’s website.

Ok, here we go with the new Easter surprise for you. As we have mentioned on our blog earlier, we start the Easter giveaway. What we’re giving away this time is nothing but the beautiful Easter WordPress theme that we’ve designed and produced exclusively to please you guys on Easter. What’s also good about it is that it’s totally free and you may use it for your own purposes! The terms are as usually - use it for your own blogs, review it and praise it in all ways that you consider necessary

Just make sure you don’t resell it and don’t include it into your design portfolios - it’s not very good to benefit from the free product this way, besides - it’s Easter time after all. So be righteous and use the theme wisely

Oh, one more thing! You can see this WordPress theme in action right now while you are reading this. We love the theme design so much we even decided to apply it to our corporate design for several days. Anyways, happy Easter to you and your families! Enjoy the theme!

DOWNLOAD THEME

You might have heard of the free WordPress themes that TemplateMonster has started giving away a long time ago. So this time we’re doing something similar, the only difference is that we’re giving away the free Drupal themes.

There’s a Template Monster page containing 5 free templates available for download there. Each of the five is made in its own style and has its own topic. So basically you may choose one of them, download it and use it for your own Drupal-based website. Yes, that’s right! You are totally allowed to use them for your websites, the only limitation is that you cannot resell them - but we’re sure you wouldn’t

Well, hopefully you guys would love these free Drupal themes. And we’ll have more similar surprises similar to this one in nearest future. Be sure to check back!