Reactions to story from Royal Pingdom

• 

  Error 404

  http://leblog.wcie.fr/leblog/2008/02/error-404.html
  142 days ago in W&CIE - le blog · Authority: 11

  Qui n'est jamais tombé sur une page web avec un message ressemblant plus ou moins à : "ERREUR 404 PAGE NON TROUVEE La page que vous cherchez est peut-être déplacée, supprimée ou momentanément inaccessible sur le serveur..." Ce genre de page, assez déstabilisante, vous indique que le site ne trouve pas la page demandée, que l’adresse saisie est erronée voire que le lien n'existe plus. Le navigateur lambda se retrouve alors perdu dans cet océan qu'est Internet. Certains sites proposent, afin d'aiguiller les internautes, de combler cette lacune par divers genres : graphique, geek, animée, ... Petit tour d'horizon parmi différents styles allant de l'interactif au geek en passant par le graphisme. Quelques petites recommandations néanmoins pour les webdesigners et autres développeurs : Mettre un plan du site (si vous en avez un) et un lien vers la page d'accueil. C'est sans doute la meilleure solution pour rediriger les internautes Incorporer un moteur de recherche Utiliser un design malin, rassurant et beau Eviter de mettre du jargon tel que "la page n'a pu se lancer à cause d'une erreur 214 dans la balise href ligne 2014, le paramètre index.js est configuré avec un mauvais DNS" Soyez subtil ! Vous vous adressez à quelqu'un qui ne maîtrise pas le même langage. Pour l'anecdote, pourquoi 404 ? Chaque fois que vous visitez une page, votre ordinateur envoi une requête au serveur hébergeant le site. Avant que la page ne se charge dans votre navigateur, le serveur renvoi un code : 404 quand c'est une erreur et 200 si tout va bien. Mais vous ne verrez jamais le statut 200 car le serveur aura envoyé et chargé le contenu de la page. Merci à : A List Apart, 404 Research Lab, Ecrans, Pingdom
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  How to handle your errors well

  http://23musings.blogspot.com/2007/11/how-to-handle-your-err...
  241 days ago in 23 Musings · Authority: 4

  Pingdom is a great little service which tests your website for uptime that I use on a number of sites and services. I was lucky enough to get a free account having beta tested it. Anyway, they often have some quite good insight on their blog. The latest post is one that's really close to my heart, it's all about one of the most viewed pages on the web, the good old 404 error page. In the post '23 percent of the top US websites have bad 404 pages' they discuss what a difference a well thought out and constructed 404 page can have on your websites usage. 404 pages are an inevitable problem for everyone. They can come about in a number of ways such as badly configured links, badly named files and links from search engines which point to old pages. Of course, you can put some decent error handling in place if you want to to capture all 404 responses and redirect to the new version of a page or the best match for the page request. However there will always be occasions when you can't avoid a 404 and can't do anything to guess where to send the user so you need this generic page to present to users. The biggest culprits are those which don't have custom error pages at all and purely present the standard browser error page. The next worst are those with unintelligible error messages and no links to any useful sections of their websites. The way to do this properly is to make it light hearted and useful. Admit the error, don't make the user think they've messed up. Offer a way out, provide useful links to the main starting points of your website, don't make it a dead end. And most of all, make it a valuable page, if you're selling something make sure users who find the 404 page know what you do, it can even be an opportunity to promote your products.
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  Do You Have A Useful 404 Page?

  http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/11/19/do-you-have-a-u...
  242 days ago in Articles by Mathew Ingram | WebProNews · No authority yet

  Crashing into a 404 page not found result when arriving from a link where the visitor expected to find useful content could make or break that person's expectations of that site. We have several creative epithets and colorful metaphors we apply to sites that vomit back a useless 404 result, especially when the preview of the link in either a search engine's results, or comments on another site, lead us to believe the destination will be worth the visit. Other people run into that frustration, and according to monitoring site Pingdom, they are hitting it a lot in the top 100 websites as ranked by Alexa traffic. "Curious about how the big players on the web were handling this, we tested the 404 error pages for all the top 100 websites in the US and found that almost one in four had an inadequate 404 error page. Sinners include Google, Match.com, YouTube, Blogger, Megaupload and many more," Pingdom noted in their post. Webmasters can do a better job with their 404 pages. Instead of just bringing the visit to an abrupt end, like Match.com does with a blank page, the 404 offers an opportunity to provide the visitor with a reason to stay on the site and look around rather than hitting the Back button automatically. Pingdom particularly liked what Weather.com does with its 404 results. Weather.com identifies itself, has links to its other services, and provides a search option to find weather forecasts. It's much better than another 404 laggard, Google, which tosses out branded page not found error 404s. Webmaster, Internet, Error Pages, 404 follow me on Twitter
• 

  Do You Have A Useful 404 Page?

  http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/11/19/do-you-have-a-u...
  242 days ago in WebProNews | eBusiness News, Search News, and Business Videos · Authority: 2,150

  Crashing into a 404 page not found result when arriving from a link where the visitor expected to find useful content could make or break that person's expectations of that site. We have several creative epithets and colorful metaphors we apply to sites that vomit back a useless 404 result, especially when the preview of the link in either a search engine's results, or comments on another site, lead us to believe the destination will be worth the visit. Other people run into that frustration, and according to monitoring site Pingdom, they are hitting it a lot in the top 100 websites as ranked by Alexa traffic. "Curious about how the big players on the web were handling this, we tested the 404 error pages for all the top 100 websites in the US and found that almost one in four had an inadequate 404 error page. Sinners include Google, Match.com, YouTube, Blogger, Megaupload and many more," Pingdom noted in their post. Webmasters can do a better job with their 404 pages. Instead of just bringing the visit to an abrupt end, like Match.com does with a blank page, the 404 offers an opportunity to provide the visitor with a reason to stay on the site and look around rather than hitting the Back button automatically. Pingdom particularly liked what Weather.com does with its 404 results. Weather.com identifies itself, has links to its other services, and provides a search option to find weather forecasts. It's much better than another 404 laggard, Google, which tosses out branded page not found error 404s. Webmaster, Internet, Error Pages, 404 follow me on Twitter

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