
60 Really Cool and Creative Error 404 Pages - chaostheory
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/60-really-cool-and-creative-error-404-pages/
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patio11
I don't know if cool and creative is necessarily what I'd aim for.

Tell them what went wrong, tell them why it went wrong, tell them what they
can do about it. Then, maybe, make a joke.

Here's mine. Nothing to write home about, but it describes the problem in
terms my customers can understand, and gives them options which work for the
majority of people.

<http://www.bingocardcreator.com/doesnt/exist>

I'd add a search box but it has never been a pressing priority since I can
correct borked links on the backend, which means "blogger typoed a URL" only
404s until I get to my admin interface.

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timcederman
There's something about an apology in an error message which I find incredibly
grating. I don't think it's just me -- the feedback we've had in user testing
has backed this up.

But saying "We're terribly sorry" is worse because a) Who is "we"? and b)
"terribly sorry" is even more grating than just "sorry".

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olefoo
Always put the site map on the 404 page, but you should be looking at the
404's and fixing them too.

If someone is sending 10 people a day your way with a mistyped url you should
catch it and redirect it.

So if marshallk profiles your hot startup and sends everyone to
<http://yoursi.te/bunnys.html> when they should have been going to
<http://yoursi.te/bunnies.html> catching it and fixing it on your end should
be part of the 404 view.

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sh1mmer
They are cute but they aren't solving the problem and helping the user
recover.

A better example is Motley Fool. It has a cute little haiku which defuses the
situation but then they give a lot of recovery advice.

<http://www.fool.com/foobarbazqux>

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theantidote
I've never put this much effort into my 404 pages. Usually it's just a "The
page you typed in cannot be found. Please check the spelling or use the search
box below if you need help finding it." Or something like that at least.

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josefresco
None of these 404's are very helpful to the site user or administrator, just
funny.

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unalone
Yeah. I'd hoped they would show some error pages with some utility behind
them. And not all of these are very impressive. The list is quite padded -
though that's to be expected, with lists nowadays...

