Wanted: Your 404 Error Pages
Every day you visit one of them. The pages, which don’t exist any longer, have moved to a new server or have never existed at all. Once you’ve missed your intended destination, either through a bad or outdated link, or a typo in the page you were hoping to reach, you’ll hopefully get an internal error message from the server. However, by default these messages aren’t that helpful – after all, you are looking for the information, not for the reason you can’t find this information.

Good news – it doesn’t have to be this way. You can style server error messages just the way you style any other pages. It’s not only a more elegant way to deal with errors, but is also extremely useful for keeping users on your web-site, finding new clients or communicating with the old ones.
Do you like feeling to feel lost? No, you don’t. Neither do we. And neither do the visitors of your site.
However, most web-sites do not provide extended error messages, even altough they are intended to lead users to the information they’ve actually been looking for. The reason for that is the simple fact that it is usually forgotten. It’s time to change it.
We’d like you to create a beautiful, functional and user-friendly 404 error page for your own web-site. We’ll collect the most creative, usable and elegant solutions and review them in one of our next posts.
How can I participate?
To participate, just post the URL of your 404 error page in the comments to this post. The page must be online and appear once the 404 error occurs. To identify you as the owner of a web-site you’ve mentioned, place the text “Smashing Magazine” (without a link) on your 404 error page. No matter where: it has to be visible and can be deleted afterwards. Spam will be blacklisted, so the link will never appear in our posts again.
Beginning: 24.07.2007
End: 07.08.2007
Some starting points
To give you some ideas to get started from, we’d like to present some interesting and user-friendly solutions you might be willing to use, extend and combine in your personal 404-pages. In fact, an 404 error page can be everything you’d like it to be, as shown on 404 Research Lab. There you’ll also find tutorials which describe how an 404 error page can be created and installed.
Keep in mind: outstanding 404-pages don’t only communicate the occured error message, but also give solutions and options for further navigation. Don’t let your users feel lost. Take them with you. Let them explore your site.
1. Use appealing visual elements.
2. Twitter: 404
3. The Big Noob – Page not found
2. Provide alternatives for navigation.
5. Devlounge
7. Page not found | Blog | 1976design.com
3. Offer an overview of possibly related posts.
11. Acro Media Inc – 404
12. Technorati: 404
4. Communicate with your visitors.
13. 404. You’re screwed. (kottke.org)
14. Design View / Andy Rutledge – Error 404! Oh no you di’int!
17. JeffCroft.com: Page not found
5. Be sincere and cool.
18. IBM.com – 404
19. Apple.com – 404
6. Be user-friendly.
20. IKEA – The page cannot be found
7. (Don’t) provide too many options.
8. (Don’t) provide too little options.
9. DWYWTD (Do Whatever You Want To Do)
24. Scythe.net

Get inspired, folks. Show what you can do.
Make the Web prettier. And make your page more usable.

























lyononline
July 29th, 2007 5:34 amhttp://www.google-stories.com/404
James
July 29th, 2007 5:37 amhttp://www.psyked.co.uk/404
Uses a few nice wordpress plugins to dish out suggested posts…
Katy
July 29th, 2007 8:31 amIt’s a flipping 404 page!
Spiros
July 29th, 2007 6:33 pm404 / Location not found page:
http://www.nestoria.co.uk/help/unknown-location
we tried to make it both as helpful and simple as possible.
Jack
July 29th, 2007 7:13 pmRainfall Daffinson’s shot the target 404 page
http://rainfall-daffinson.com/404
Syam Kumar
July 29th, 2007 11:43 pmhttp://www.webmasterview.com/smashing_magazine/
Jacob
July 30th, 2007 1:32 amhttp://dynz.net/jacob/404
Nancy O
July 30th, 2007 3:08 amUh, oh… 404
Nancy O
July 30th, 2007 3:13 amLet’s try this again.
Uh, oh… 404
Alt-Web.com/404redirect.shtml
Andrew
July 30th, 2007 7:11 amhttp://getmygist.com/index.php/404/
My new/first site! Enjoy
Goran
July 30th, 2007 1:54 pmhttp://www.kogan.com.au/noreception/“
prinzzess
July 30th, 2007 4:02 pmhttp://www.prinzzess.biz/404.php
Anders Moen
July 30th, 2007 5:23 pmhttp://www.andersmoen.com/v2/404/
That is my 404 error page. It’s almost the same text as the default one has, but it is put inside my design :)
andrew
July 30th, 2007 5:45 pmhttp://www.hablux.net/wrongfilename
andrew
July 30th, 2007 5:47 pmhttp://www.hablux.net/possibleerrorpagehere
Torsten
July 30th, 2007 6:58 pmAs my 404-page anyway needed a redesign, I think it is a good idea to do it now and participate here as well:
404 – Page not found
Albert Garcia
July 30th, 2007 9:24 pmhttp://www.obolog.com/404
Jason Lutjen
July 31st, 2007 10:10 amSlonky.com’s Error 404 Page
A bit goofy and fun, but gets the point across and gives options for users to get where they were intending. It fits our company culture perfectly as we are a well-managed, yet laid back start-up.
Jon Hughes
July 31st, 2007 2:21 pmOur 404 page:
http://phazm.com/404
Pretty basic, just themed to our design, and a bit of “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” humor added in :)
Michele Cilfone
July 31st, 2007 4:15 pmhttp://www.inspiringsoftware.com/bin/index.py?module=main&program=pagina_404
Mr Leonard
July 31st, 2007 10:29 pmWe use this 404 page as a final “Page Not Found”, nothing fancy.
AXIGEN 404 Page
porcupine
August 1st, 2007 12:06 am404 times error
Frank
August 1st, 2007 12:47 amhttp://bueltge.de/404/
phantom
August 1st, 2007 4:01 amCan I post 404 error page in russian (whole site is in russian :) )?
Ron
August 1st, 2007 6:52 amhttp://www.jackfig.com/missing.html
Biscuitrat
August 1st, 2007 11:51 amhttp://www.biscuitrat.com/404.shtml — sweet and simple. I can’t believe that it took me months to create a better 404 page.
jorge
August 1st, 2007 3:35 pmhttp://farfromneutral.com/exodus/404
a hodgepodge of stuff
Necnom
August 1st, 2007 3:51 pmhttp://www.normanddeveault.com/404.html
Chris
August 1st, 2007 6:06 pmHere’s the ‘Click Harder’ 404 that many people find funny-
http://www.3complete.com/page_cannot_be_displayed.htm
xav
August 1st, 2007 6:25 pmhttp://www.tix02.be/404
Malin
August 2nd, 2007 4:42 amI hope you guys like grumpy Snoofy! :)
Here is my 404:
http://www.infektia.net/404/
Damien ALEXANDRE
August 2nd, 2007 2:54 pmhttp://blog.damienalexandre.fr/index.php?404
Todd D. Lloyd
August 5th, 2007 4:30 amGreat idea for a post…I am wondering just what other
instances would an error page be displayed?
Kindly,
Todd
Martin Korner
August 6th, 2007 5:29 pmHere’s my error page:
Error 404
..or you can try:
http://www.martinkorner.co.uk/nowhere/nothing.htm
Thanks,
Martin
MADmac
August 6th, 2007 6:58 pmMADmac 404 error page :
http://www.madmac.fr/404
Kevin
August 7th, 2007 12:36 amhttp://www.nextwaveperformance.com/oops.html
Egyptian Senior Web Designer
August 7th, 2007 12:55 amvery nice also you can use this page to promote Google AdSense
Alex
August 7th, 2007 12:20 pmHey Smashing Magazine,
my website is not finished yet and looks a bit messy, but I already have an error 404 page :)
http://derfrison.com/error404.php
I thought it could be funny to have different jokes on the page. It’s loading randomly a joke on the page so nobody gets sad or mad and they won’t see always the same page.
Everytime you reload – a new joke :)
Alex
Jutta
August 8th, 2007 2:14 amThank you for the good idea! This one is the small and simple error page on jukemedia.de :-)
Errorpage jukemedia.de
Remi
August 8th, 2007 5:25 amIt might not be all useful, but hey…
http://www.tortillaphilia.com/404
Adam Dorman
August 8th, 2007 7:09 amMine is pure poetry:
http://www.adamdorman.com/404
Starfeeder
August 8th, 2007 7:44 amSite isn’t launched yet, but here is the current 404 page :)
http://dev.starfeeder.com/404/404.html
Joe
August 10th, 2007 5:14 amhttp://www.austinserver.com/404.php
Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz
August 12th, 2007 1:05 amthe follow-up article will be published on wednesday. thank your very much for participating! comments are closed now.