Comments on: Help at the point of need – 404 error pages

By: Ben Elwell

Ben Elwell — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 11:54:01 +0000

Apparently it was up and down all weekend. There are still issues with the stability of it after the recent upgrade :S

By: Jo Alcock

Jo Alcock — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 20:13:34 +0000

Ahhh, that could explain why my test yesterday didn’t work as I had the exact same thought and tried extension /joeyanne to see what our error page was like.

Looks like our website may well have been down all weekend then. :S

By: Ben Elwell

Ben Elwell — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 19:35:34 +0000

Don’t thank me just yet. At the moment, most of my work involves removing useful features from my plans in order to get the site into the new CMS. I don’t know what capabilities immediacy has for 404 pages.

I was just going to see what we have as our current 404 page, but it looks as though our website has fallen over again after the upgrade. At this rate, the 404 page will be the least of my worries :S

By: Jo Alcock

Jo Alcock — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 15:21:32 +0000

Thanks Ben, I thought it might be something you’d already thought about and am very glad it is.

By: Ben Elwell

Ben Elwell — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 12:30:13 +0000

I read the article in Smashing Magazine yesterday too, and I was impressed by Chelmsford’s 404 page.

No need to even ask for something like this with our web refresh project – it’s already on my list. The challenge is going to be creating something original and amusing for our 404 pages (and useful too of course!!). Need to figure out what options I have in the new CMS first though.

Let me know if you have any brilliant ideas for it.

By: Matt Wilcox

Matt Wilcox — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 22:36:41 +0000

Error pages are a great place for any designer. You can so easily turn a naff experience into a good one simply by handling it right. I love quirky 404 pages. Some are hilarious, some are really clever, some are both. There’s been a lot of stuff written about 404′s over the years, and yet so many remain generic un-helpful, un-amusing browser based “404 – error not found” messages.

There’s a flickr pool of other HTTP code images too, but I can’t find them