Many of the best, most clever, 404 error pages have disappeared over the years. What are the current highlights, or ones that survived the test of time?
"Liquidity traps
We injected some extra money into the technology team but there was little or no interest so they simply kept it, thus failing to stimulate the page economy."
As I imagine tech teams across the world thinking, "Wait! We could have just kept the money?!"
Ok, you win! I gave up at some point and started scrolling impulsively to check if this is an infinite feed generated by some llm query. Turns out it was finite.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pron surfed, weak and weary,
Over many a strange and spurious site of 'hot xxx galore',
While I clicked my fav'rite bookmark, suddenly there came a warning,
And my heart was filled with mourning, mourning for my dear amour.
"’Tis not possible!", I muttered, "give me back my free hardcore!"
Quoth the server, 404
Adult Swim's 404 page always has a dark, sometimes surreal, shaggy-dog story that ends with a reference to the page being 404.[1]
The page seems to return the same story each time you access it (at least on the same day). I'm not sure when they change from one story to another. The author has posted some of the other stories on other sites.[2][3][4][5] I still vividly recall reading this one in particular (although this reproduction is missing the bolding of the text in the second to last paragraph).[6]
404 pages should have a different favicon so that when opening multiple tabs in the background you will notice something different.
Here's mine with a little easter egg when hovering over the numbers: https://ss64.com/404
I'm going to ask a stupid question at my own peril.. please go easy on me
Does serving a 404 page still allow the response of 404 as the response code? or is it technically a 200 since it is serving the custom 404 page successfully?
If you think about it, any response you get is a "200" by that definition since the server successfully gave you...something.
The browser usually has no special handling for most response codes, so serving a 404 page with a 404 status code is fine/expected and lets things (browser, scraper, etc) respond appropriately. I don't think the browser treats it specially but if you were scraping, you'd obviously want to ignore that result.
It is frustrating to work with APIs that return something like
200
{
meta: {
status: 404
message: "field <x> not found"
}
}
If you request a page like www.ycombinator.com/monkeybusiness
There is no page called MonkeyBusiness so the webserver will throw a 404 error and either display a default page generated by the web server software or optionally a custom page.
In reality the 404 page will have a different url that you never see.
If you happened to know that the page was www.ycombinator.com/error404.html
Then you could load that page directly and it would return 200 OK
In very simplified terms, "404" is just a number that's included in the "invisible" HTTP header of the web page you're visiting. Whether this number is "200" (success) or "404" (not found), it doesn't affect how your browser renders the web page.
Technically you could have a website where you serve real web pages full of content using the (wrong) 404 code, or serve web pages that tell the user "not found" using the (wrong) 200 code. It would massively mess up bots, search engines, browser extensions, and any other software that needs to know whether a page actually exists - but it would be fully browsable like normal by a human with a web browser, since humans don't see or read HTTP headers.
Brave offers to check the Wayback Machine for a cached version of the page.
Basically: 404 tells crawlers that the URL is invalid.
The HTTP server also has to return something,. It could simply return 0-length content and allow the browser to show its error page, but that wouldn't be "on brand."
I had a similar debate with coworkers about returning 404 when a DB webhoook query found no rows. It added extra complexity to client code trying to figure out if it was a bad URL, bad query, or just no rows.
404 means the server cannot find the requested resource. In the case of a database, the "resource" is the database endpoint.
So, 404 would be used in case the database endpoint does not exist at the URL you tried to access it at. A query returning zero rows would be a "success" in HTTP terms.
Yep, for that 204 (OK, but no results) exists. But if you serve a browser a page with 204 in the header, it refuses to render anything since 204 mandates an empty body, so the browser doesn't even look at it.
It is a good question! The 404 status code is useful context. The browser (or user agent, crawler, your code!) can act however it likes in response to the 404. A browser will render the page still, thus all the funky 404 pages
since sites can apply their branding to the error. If this were not the case the browser might show a generic message to the user (people would get used to this).
An example of where the browser might ignore the body is
in a 301 redirect.
One time I lost something important at work. I asked a co-worker about it and she suggested we do the St. Anthony prayer, so more-or-less to humor her and to take my mind off the worry I went along.
The important thing was found later that day, in a very unlikely place.
The text at the top is rather standard boilerplate 'page not found' verbiage, but the justifications according to the different economic theories listed afterwards is the hidden gem of this page!
My poetry site's 404 - you get presented with a randomly selected poem as an apology. You can refresh the page to read different random poems. If you refresh too many times your eyes will bleed. You're welcome!
Well, given what the site is doing I don't think they could really return all those status codes for the various pages and still show the images in all browsers. I think httpbin.org may be closer to what you're looking for
Also, I've been on the Internet long enough to know that there are unquestionably other sites misusing status codes, made worse by our graphql friend cheerfully packaging server errors in 200 responses
Parallax effect Github 404 was the best. I even had a coffee mug of the design they officially sold (with the text to the effect of 'This isn't the drink you're looking for') but someone took it and they no longer sell them, which was very disappointing.
Wow, yeah. I hadn't seen a GitHub 404 page in a while (new job, don't code much anymore) and my first thought on seeing it was that the 404 page was broken. That would have been an odd recursion.
There are longer versions of that variant of the poem, and versions with cleaner references, that can be easily found, but I think this is the original – it is certainly the first instance of it that I saw.
Not an actual 404 error page, but: for a short while, I ran the web site for an Amnesty International writing group in the Netherlands. We were assigned group number 404. The home page had a similar layout to the standard 404 error message but with a text like "Error 404: person not found", and a link to the actual home page. Let's just say people were confused and didn't find us.
Bravoboard's 404 page is truly unique and innovative! It features an interactive message board where visitors can see posts and messages left by others, inviting them to join in and leave a message themselves. This creative approach to a typically mundane page highlights Bravoboard's core capabilities in a fun and engaging way. Bravo to Bravoboard for such a clever idea!
There was a separate one for Businessweek with an endless Droste-effect of a lady reading a Businessweek issue, headlined "When will Bloomberg get its sh#t together?"
I wish I were a fly on the wall when the decision was made to get rid of those 404 pages.
I think that this video, embedded in a 404 page, makes the best 404 page, hands down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dYKEMSMV3w. Lance Cummins created this video 10 years ago rewriting the words to U2's song "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For". The words start out: "You have come, to my site. You were hoping, it would be alright, only to find this page, only to find this page. You can yell, you can scream, throw your keyboard, at the computer screen...
The videography here is really excellent.
I didn’t know there’s something called 404 day, yesterday I was designing a 404 page for my startup site, front end isn’t my area of expertise and not yet done but open for feedback https://ubiquitous-tapioca-350c21.netlify.app/404.html
I can't recreate the error now, but going to www.moosejaw.com in the EU used to give me the error "we can't offer products in EU... We're working on it. but until then, maybe go try some wasabi pea dust ice cream." I have a screenshot, thank god.
A range of spurious economic explanations for why they couldn't serve the page.