Page 404

How to take advantage of "404" pages?

If you've ever tried to open a Web page and found it doesn't exist, you may have misspelled the name of the Web page, or the link for the page may have become outdated. In either event, you probably received a message like this:

-"Page not found"

-The requested URL was not found on this server.

Example of a 404 page

When this has happened to you, chances are you returned to the site where your search originated and never visited that site again.

As a Web browser, it's annoying to see the "404 page." As a Web master, it is even worse. The appearance of this page can cause you to lose traffic. So your aim is to minimize the amount of 404 errors.

The solution to the "404 page" problem is to replace the standard error message with your custom page. This is very simple to do.

Just follow these steps:

1-Make sure your site is hosted by server software called "Apache." To double-check this, you can contact your Web host and ask.

2-Now use an FTP program (from the FTP section above) to connect to your server, search for a file named .”htaccess." Download this file to your computer. If you don't find the file, just create it yourself.

3-Open the file with any text editor, or open a blank file, and type this into the first line: ErrorDocument 404 http://www.yourdomain.com/404page.html

4-Save the file as plain text and under the .”htaccess" name.

5-Now create the (404page.html) that will load when a 404 error occurs.

6-At last send back the .”htaccess" and"404page.html."

How to create 404 pages?

You want to be sure that when a visitor comes to an error page he or she will not feel annoyed, so include in your error page a greeting that explains that the URL he or she was looking for could not be found, and provide them with interesting things about your site as well as a link to it. This will encourage your visitors to click into your site instead of leaving.

Don’t make your "404 page" full of links. Just make it look like the other pages on your site. You can add a search utility that allows people to search your site, a little navigation menu to your site, or any other suitable features.

After the .”htaccess" file and the "HTML page" is ready, upload them to your server.