Customize Your 404 Page
Written by Hussein on March 21, 2008 – 11:20 am -Before I start, let me first tell you what 404 error page is. 404 or the also known as nothing found page, it is seen when you enter a page from a certain domain or website that is not found on the server. It doesn’t mean that the server is down, it’s just that your request cannot be found.
As I checked my stats, I saw that I got lots of hits from 404 page. Since I lost lots of files before because of webhosting problem, maybe there are still some pages that are visible in search engine and users used to visit it but unfortunately it is not anymore in my database. And that’s why I got lots of page hits from 404.
Why not monetize your 404 page? I’m sure you got also lots of hits in your 404 or nothing found page. Put some stuffs like affiliate ads, cool hot videos, and any other thing that will lead users to interesting things. Don’t make your readers disappointed seeing nothing in your website and just a “Nothing Found”.
How to customize 404 in WordPress?
404 can be easily modified if your WordPress theme support 404 error page or something. It is sometimes named as 404.php. Just study how the codes are placed and make sure that make a backup because we can’t avoid some error in customizing. You must know coding and etc. Consult Googel if you don’t know how to do so.
What if there’s no 404.php?
I don’t know php coding so I can’t tech you on how to do it and I’m sorry for that. Maybe just try to find a WordPress theme that has 404.php. A lots pf theme with 404.php can be found here -> click me.
For advanced users:
You can customize 404 and other error page in cPanel. I know it is very advanced and I don’t know about it. Maybe I’ll know everything after sometime and I hope I can and I can share it to you guys.
Go now, and customize your 404 or nothing found page. If you have the 404.php, then it would be easy for you to pimp your nothing found page. If you can try to visit a non-existing page in this domain, you can see my nothing found page with a hot video of Paris Hilton.
Update:
Thanks to Jug for informing me that Adsense codes are not allowed inside the 404 page. It is fine if you have Adsense in the header, sidebar and footer part. It’s just Google Adsense doesn’t encourage users to put their codes in a non-content page like 404.
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Posted in SEO |
March 21st, 2008 at 8:41 pm
404 is the blue screen of deaths cousin!
March 21st, 2008 at 8:44 pm
@caleb - what do you mean with that?
March 21st, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Cool post, but AdSense isn’t allowed in pages with no content (i.e. 404 pages.)
Affiliate links and other ads are okay though.
March 21st, 2008 at 9:31 pm
@Jug - Thanks so much. I didn’t knew it before. I updated my post for the sake of everyone.
March 22nd, 2008 at 1:15 am
@Jug, I didnt knew that. is it in their TOS. gotta check the tos now. thanks for the tips
March 22nd, 2008 at 6:50 pm
It’s not that Google Adsense does not encourage you to put adsense on non content pages, it’s that you are not allowed in the T & C’s to do so but to get round it on the 404 page, why not 301 redirect the 404 page to more content filled page that does have adsense.
March 25th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
did somebody suggest to customize 404 to redirect to its main page?
there are a lot of hackers wannabee trying to guess existing folders and web page from a site that could probably be a hole for them to exploit from and enter into, sometimes they guess folders and default links or password web page like
66.63.x.x - - [13/Feb/2008:14:56:19 +0100] “GET /wp02/?p=143 HTTP/1.1″ 404 279 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; Hotbar4.6.0)
The above log says,the IP was looking for a wordpress default folder installtion (wp02), on page 143, can you imagine that? 404 was there ofcourse, but if you can redirect 404 to somewhere else or to the main page, better consider that than nothing. some webmasters redirect 404 to fbi.gov.ph too for additional scaredness for scrip kiddies around.
personally, i redirect them to main page, considering that they could have been referred by some google/yahoo referrals to a an old page, the main page can lead them to that logically by search queries.
goodluck then!