A Danish website recently asked their user to send in the best 404 Error Pages from Danish websites and blogs. I thought that it would be fun to ask you, my great readers, to help find the best, funniest and most creative 404 Error Pages on the Internet.
Help me find the Best 404 Error Page
I am sure that you all have seen a lot of these pages over the years. Most of the time it is very frustrating because you don’t find what you are looking for, but sometimes we comes across a funny page that make us smile or maybe even think that the guys having this site really have thought about everything. I will collect the pages/links you send to me and share the best of them here on my blog when I have received a nice collection to choose from.
What is a 404 Error Page?
A 404 Error Page is the page a Webserver will redirect you to, when the URL you have entered was not to be found. It can because that the file does not longer exist or it can because you have mistyped the URL. If you have not created or customized your own 404 Error Page the Webserver will have a default 404 error page that it will show instead. These standard 404 error pages are often very simple and without much information of what have caused the problem. As you can see below this 404 error page does not give you many other options that to leave again.
Why should you care about your 404 Error Page?
We all try to drive as much traffic to our blogs as possible and we would also very much want people to stay and hang out at our sites. If they hit a standard 404 Error Pages most people will properly leave immediately and try to find the information somewhere else. That is a shame and in fact there is some things you can do to try and change that. Below you can see what I have done to try and help people to find what they was looking for and most of all keep them staying on my blog. I have a search field where they can search my blog for the information they was looking for. I also have added a list of my categories and my must recent posts. There is no guarantee that they will not leave anyway, but at least I have made it easier for them to stay a while on my blog.
Send me a Link to the Best most Creative 404 Error Page
I would very much appreciate you help to find the best, funniest and most creative 404 Error pages out on the Internet. You are also very welcome to send me a link to your own 404 Error Page and a little comment on what you have done to optimized it to keep visitors on your Blog or Website. I would also be delighted of you will share this post with your friends using the Social media buttons below 🙂
Thanks Thomas for this wonderful trick. I never think about this once i got 239 404 errors on my blog when i was switched my blog from Joomla to wordpress and i was manually redirected the traffic by editing .htaccess file. But after reading this article, i am thinking why didnt i think this wonderful way. Its awesome trick to engage the visitors. Thanks for sharing.
Great Trick Thomas, I never consider 404 page is very much important regarding traffic point of view and after reading this post I have learned quite a few things.
Thanks for sharing!
You are welcome Ayaz. You should for sure check out your own 404 error page and see if there is something you could improve.
Hi Thomas,
Its a very interesting trick to know.I always found some very important points from your post. I didn’t know that how 404 error page could be advantageous for us. Thanks for the trick.
You are welcome Pete 🙂
Nice info which will be prove so useful for all blogger and online marketers. thanks for the tips.
I never realized 404 pages are that important. Yes actually, through the improved 404 pages you can actually link back to other posts
Its really good to create a attractive and informative 404 error page because most of the time people reach to error page Accidentally and don’t get any way back to correct page.
http://www.jotsai.com/e/404.html
This 404 page is really funny and i thought i was worth sharing it 🙂
Hi Rashmi
Very funny and creative 404 page. Thank you for sharing it here on my blog.
I found this 404 page very funny and worthy to share it here. http://www.snakesinspace.com/404notfound
Good one Scott. Thank you very much for sharing it with us 🙂
Very nice, i like it a lot! As we can see errors can be funny as well and that is something a reader really respects.
Hello Thomas. I found this 404 page http://x94.us/errors/404.html
FYI, the site is still under construction, but the 404 page is already famous. I guess the developer is too busy on building the 404 page, that they forgot to build the site 🙂
Haha, maybe you are right about that Leo. It is for sure a great 404 error page 🙂
Thank you for sharing it here on my blog.
Good idea Thomas. Below is a link to our custom 404 page on pro-landing-pages.com. We’re using WordPress with the Genesis framework and a simple theme, but all of the content is created using the Premise Landing Page plugin.
The content is personalized, offers humor, suggests trying again but also offers a link to another page so it’s not a dead end.
http://pro-landing-pages.com/well-that-was-weird"
In our book on creating landing pages, there is a technical appendix with instructions for WordPress users on how to replace the default WP 404 page with a custom 404 page.
Hi Kevin
Thank you for sharing.
I just stumbled on a page just days ago that feature a great-looking 404 page for her site, sadly I can’t remember the site’s name. Anyways, it’s good that you’re considering to make your 404 page (something that many webmasters neglect to pat attention to) look good for your audience. Hope you’ll find the best design that suits your taste.
I just came across this one on Microsofts new social project:
http://www.so.cl/#/error
I just created a custom 404 page, what do you think what types of links should i add to it?
Related Posts? Recent posts? Popular?
I would put recent posts, maybe popular posts and also a search box making visitors search your blog.
there are loads of 404 error pages available, anyways for inspiration check this link.. http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/17/404-error-pages-reloaded/
Thank you Raj. There was some great one in between 🙂
Very nice, i enjoyed all of them 🙂 Thanks for sharing!
There are some good ones posted here I like
http://www.designstuffdaily.com/404.html
You can find a load more at http://fab404.com/
It’s a great trick, Thomas:) I didn’t know how much 404 page is good for traffic. Thanks for sharing this information with us.
I have seen many times 404 Error Page on my PC when I was unable to access the desired URL. But I had not so much technical details about this page.Your post has now provided all the answers of queries about the 404 Error Page.
Honestly I never thought of 404 page this way. I think it is a good idea to make a custom page so that people don’t leave our blog. I like the information that you have shared and this is something new I learned. Keep up the good work.
Thank you Mike.
Lost? This one is clever and made me laugh
Haha, good one Mark 🙂
Its true when they find it error 404, our natural instinct is to leave and find a new one. Even myself, but I usually refresh 3X and if still happened, I’ll leave the page.
Thanks for this very nice insight.
My custom 404 is really not too interesting, nor funny, but it help my visitors to find what they are looking for. I think that custom page is a good way to get your visitor back. I have to admit that I didn’t know how to set it, so I asked one of my friend bloggers to do that for me, and she did a wonderful job. So, I have the best custom 404 page ever. 🙂
Hi Danijela
I am glad that my post helped you to create a better 404 error page. I just visited it and I think that is looking good and works very informative. Hope to see you back on my blog soon 🙂
Web masters are missing a trick by not using a custom 404 page. From a visitors point of view, there nothing worse than visiting a site only to discover it is temporarily unavailable. Clever use of a 404 page can salvage the situation and build rapport with the visitor.
@Mark that one is indeed very funny 404 page.
404 page should not be dull,a good 404 page would be to include some latest posts or some related article – keeps readers engaged and not distracted.
Very impressive Thomas, thank you for the idea. I’ll check my 404 page and try to improve it. Great work. Keep it up!
I had never thought of making error pages “creative” but what a great idea! I’m off to see what I can do to help you find creative error pages and make my own 🙂
Hi Thomas,
I used to spend a lot of time creating the perfect 404 page. But, I always ended up with the same information, and now I’m only using a standard one, with the links to most of my pages and posts. This way it will be easy to find my content.
But, I’d love to have a really funny one, one that stands out from the crowd, and one that makes people talk 🙂
This is very good idea to engaging the website visitors. I never thought about this. Thanks for sharing.
Hi, Thomas
Like a lot of folks, I usually leave the webpage if I can’t find what I’m looking for. I like your idea of adding a search tool / categories if someone reaches a 404 error page. And to be honest, until I read your post, I haven’t thought much about customizing my 404 error pages.
I’ve run into some interesting 404 error pages recently, but unfortunately, the links escape me right now.
Gives me something to think about. Thanks so much for the idea!!
See you soon, and take care.
Hi Allyson
Glad you liked my post and have got some inspiration for your own 404 page. You can see some of the best I have received here:
https://techthatworks.net/common/most-creative-404-error-pages-on-the-internet
i’m never edit or recreate my 404 page, i like to see others and maybe i will interested
I think this is a good idea because it’s good to give people options to stay on our blog when they get a 404 page. I have a blogger blog so I don’t know how can I make it work for me. Anyway, thanks for the information 🙂
I am sure that it is possible to do the same in Blogger as well and you really should make one for your own blog. Try and make a search on Google and I am sure you can find a “How-to” guide.
Hi Bob.
I just came across this post about creating 404 pages in blogger:
http://techably.com/create-custom-404-page-for-blogger-blogspot-blogs/6951/
A custom and Creative 404 page is always good, it calms the reader if they get lost in the links
Its a very interesting trick to know.I always found some very important points from your post. I didn’t understand that how 404 error page could be advantageous for us. cheers so much for the knack.
Hi Thomas,
I changed my blog content quite drastically about 6 month ago and left about 140 urls with 404 errors.
Google has listed these in my webmaster tools. I have downloaded then ans slowly over time asked Google to remove them.
I recently found a free WordPress 404 redirect plugin that redirects all 404 page back to the home page.
I know this is a shortcut but the old URL’s have no relevance to any of the new content so redirecting them to my home is the best option.
So Don’t need a 404 page, anything not found goes to my homepage…
Is this good or a bad thing?
Hi Glenn
It is of cause better to redirect them to your homepage than just do a default 404 error. However if I had clicked on of the links I think I would like to get a message that the page I was looking for don’t exist anymore before I was redirect to your front page. Otherwise I would think: “That was not the link I was looking for”. I think it is better to create a custom 404 error page that tells your visitors that the page does not exist anymore, but that you have other resources that they might find interesting.
I have not seen such a great use of 404 error on the internet. very nice trick to use error into profit of our own.
thanks for sharing such a unique trick.
Thank you 🙂
You are provided a great Trick in this post. I think this is a good idea because it’s good to give people options to stay on our blog when they get a 404 page.This is very good idea to engaging the website visitors. Thanks for the shearing.
It’s a great trick, Thomas:) I didn’t know how much 404 page is good for traffic. Thanks for sharing this information with us.