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In what circumstances do you provide a custom 404 error page for your
site? What do you say?

I think that it is better to let the browser tell the user they are
careless rather than telling them yourself as Amazon does
<http://amazon.com/not_there>. Adrienne Boswell appears to agree with
me <http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info/not_there> and does not
provide a custom error page. At the other extreme Jukka Korpela
<http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/not_there> gives you a list of reasons
why you may have arrived at his error page. He offers to help by
giving you contact information or searching his site. Jonathan Little
<http://www.littleworksstudio.com/not_there> does a clever spell check
on the URL.

I would prefer to see the site home page menus on the error page but
none of the sites I have mentioned do that. As explained in a separate
thread I have been obliged to provide a custom 404 page (e.g.
<http://profectus.asia/not_there>) for a couple of my sites although I
would rather let the visitor's browser give them the bad news.

David Segall wrote:

> I would prefer to see the site home page menus on the error page but
> none of the sites I have mentioned do that. As explained in a separate
> thread I have been obliged to provide a custom 404 page (e.g.
> <http://profectus.asia/not_there>) for a couple of my sites although I
> would rather let the visitor's browser give them the bad news.

1) As explained also in the other thread, your browser does *not* handle
the error, it *only* displays what the *server* send it. It is the
*server* that sends the 404 message, which is either the page that your
hosting has setup or one that you provide.

2) If you have different sites and you want different 404 pages then set
one up for each.

3) The only internal browser error page (which I think you are confused
by) is the one for when your network connected is down.



--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed David Segall <>
writing in news::

> Adrienne Boswell appears to agree with
> me <http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info/not_there> and does not
> provide a custom error page.

That's only because I've never gotten around to doing it - for myself. For
my clients, I almost always do a 404 page. For example:
[http://csslr.adrienneboswell.com/index9.php]

--
Adrienne Boswell at Home
Arbpen Web Site Design Services
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share

In article <>, Ed Mullen <>
wrote:

> David Segall wrote:
> > In what circumstances do you provide a custom 404 error page for your
> > site? What do you say?
>
> I much prefer to see a custom error page when I visit other sites and
> for my site too. It just seems, well, more professional and friendly I
> guess. Hence, I use custom pages for 300, 401, 403 and 404 errors.
>
> > I would prefer to see the site home page menus on the error page but
> > none of the sites I have mentioned do that.
>
> http://edmullen.net/not_there.html
> http://edmullen.net/index.html
> http://edmullen.net/media/
> http://edmullen.net/temp/
>

Yes, these strike a friendly and helpful tone. Only the witch from the
Hansel and Gretel would find anything to be displeased about.

--
dorayme

In article <>, Ed Mullen <>
wrote:

> > Yes, these strike a friendly and helpful tone. Only the witch from the
> > Hansel and Gretel would find anything to be displeased about.
>
> Yeah, well, screw her!
>
> Umm, on second thought ...

I never thought of you as that desperate. But... you learn something
every day on usenet. <g>

--
dorayme

In article <>, Ed Mullen <>
wrote:

> I was doing some
> testing on my site and tested in IE7. It did not display my custom
> error page. Hmmm. After some searching I found numerous links about
> this. The Wikipedia article is decent and succinct:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_404

The article excludes IE 7 from this behaviour:

"Internet Explorer (before Internet Explorer 7), however, will not
display custom pages unless they are larger than 512 bytes, opting to
instead display a "friendly" error page. This default behaviour can be
changed under Tools | Internet Options by clicking on the Advanced tab
and un-checking the "Show friendly HTTP error messages" check box."

But you had trouble in IE7. You better amend the article, Ed.

--
dorayme

Adrienne Boswell <> wrote:

>Gazing into my crystal ball I observed David Segall <>
>writing in news::
>
>> Adrienne Boswell appears to agree with
>> me <http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info/not_there> and does not
>> provide a custom error page.
>
>That's only because I've never gotten around to doing it - for myself.

I'm sorry. I did not intend to draw attention to the absence of the
cobbler's children's shoes.
> For
>my clients, I almost always do a 404 page. For example:
>[http://csslr.adrienneboswell.com/index9.php]

And it deserves a prize for charming 404 pages.

On Thu, 23 Jul 2009 08:18:48 GMT, David Segall wrote:

> Adrienne Boswell <> wrote:
>
>> For
>>my clients, I almost always do a 404 page. For example:
>>[http://csslr.adrienneboswell.com/index9.php]
>
> And it deserves a prize for charming 404 pages.

I thought you might be being sarcastic, since when I viewed Adrienne's page
a few days ago, I thought it to be the most unhelpful and useless excuse
for a 404 page I'd ever seen. I didn't say anything, though, since I didn't
want to bash the helpful and friendly Adrienne. I also suspected I wasn't
seeing what I was supposed to see.

And lo! Her 404 page is indeed different now, and also useful, and yea,
verily charming.


What I originally saw was something like this:

++++++++

PHP Error Message

Warning: require(nav_inc.php) [function.require]: failed to open stream: No
such file or directory in /home/a4746384/public_html/csslr/header_inc.php
on line 2

Free Web Hosting

PHP Error Message

Fatal error: require() [function.require]: Failed opening required
'nav_inc.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in
/home/a4746384/public_html/csslr/header_inc.php on line 2

Free Web Hosting

++++++++

It's looking much better now.

--
John

On 22 Jul 2009, Ed Mullen <> wrote:

> Tested in IE7, yes. I made the error files HUGE, like 200Kb. No
> effect.
> The only way I could get IE to "respect" the convention was to
> change
> the option as described. Perhaps there was som cache involvement
> but, frankly, should I have to be trouble-shooting this at all?
>
> I am not a Microsoft basher by any means, I actually like and respect
> their efforts (hell, for all I know I may own MS stock ... sorry, I'd
> have to dig for that info). Still, this is beyond the pale. Highly
> negative. I find rising many expletives which would have to be
> deleted.
>
> Ooooh! Look at that random sig entry below! Cute! Serendipity!!!
>
> Still. What's up with this? Geez. No wonder people hate MS.

The trouble with Microsoft is that they are flabbergasted when you
don't want what they want you to want and cause them the trouble of
concocting something else they want you to want in lieu of their
initial desire-surrogate. This can stack-up arithmatically to such
proportions that they forget what they originally wanted themselves.

--
Neredbojias
http://www.neredbojias.org/
http://www.neredbojias.net/

John Hosking <john-> wrote:

>On Thu, 23 Jul 2009 08:18:48 GMT, David Segall wrote:
>
>> Adrienne Boswell <> wrote:
>>
>>> For
>>>my clients, I almost always do a 404 page. For example:
>>>[http://csslr.adrienneboswell.com/index9.php]
>>
>> And it deserves a prize for charming 404 pages.
>
>I thought you might be being sarcastic, since when I viewed Adrienne's page
>a few days ago, I thought it to be the most unhelpful and useless excuse
>for a 404 page I'd ever seen. I didn't say anything, though, since I didn't
>want to bash the helpful and friendly Adrienne. I also suspected I wasn't
>seeing what I was supposed to see.
>
>And lo! Her 404 page is indeed different now, and also useful, and yea,
>verily charming.
>
>
>What I originally saw was something like this:
>
>++++++++
>
>PHP Error Message
>
>Warning: require(nav_inc.php) [function.require]: failed to open stream: No
>such file or directory in /home/a4746384/public_html/csslr/header_inc.php
>on line 2
>
>Free Web Hosting
>
>PHP Error Message
>
>Fatal error: require() [function.require]: Failed opening required
>'nav_inc.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in
>/home/a4746384/public_html/csslr/header_inc.php on line 2
>
>Free Web Hosting
>
>++++++++
>
>It's looking much better now.

You have provided another reason for letting the server deal with
errors. The server's response has been thoroughly tested in most
circumstances and in most browsers.

Please note, gentle reader, that I have learned my lesson and used
"server" in the preceding sentence, not "browser".