We have all seen them, those empty random pages that pop up when you accidentally dived into the unknown realms of a particular website – a 404 page. No one ever likes seeing these pages. To see a 404 page often means that something you were looking for is either outdated, no longer exists or resides on a page to which the link is somehow broken. What a 404 page amounts to for you, the website visitor, is equivalent to a hill of beans.

That is, up until now. Some people are finding useful and creative ways of taking your journey to the lost outer realms of their website and turning it into a creative and effective tool for helping you find your way back to where you started, or at least back to content relevant to your search. Take a look at the examples provided by Smashing Magazine and others, on creative and fun ways to take what is lost and turn it into what is found.

  • Smashing Magazine / “Wanted: Your 404 Error Pages” / July 25th, 2007 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/07/25/wanted-your-404-error-pages/
  • Smashing Magazine / “404 Error Pages Reloaded” / August 17th, 2007 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/17/404-error-pages-reloaded/

More Articles on 40 pages

Special thanks to Billy for bringing this up in the webmaster’s meeting on Thursday. It reminded me that I read the Smashing Magazine articles about a week ago and that they might be useful to some of you.