Custom Error Pages

[David Segall]

In what circumstances do you provide a custom 404 error page for your
site? What do you say?

I think that it is better to let the browser tell the user they are
careless rather than telling them yourself as Amazon does
<http://amazon.com/not_there>. Adrienne Boswell appears to agree with
me <http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info/not_there> and does not
provide a custom error page. At the other extreme Jukka Korpela
<http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/not_there> gives you a list of reasons
why you may have arrived at his error page. He offers to help by
giving you contact information or searching his site. Jonathan Little
<http://www.littleworksstudio.com/not_there> does a clever spell check
on the URL.

I would prefer to see the site home page menus on the error page but
none of the sites I have mentioned do that. As explained in a separate
thread I have been obliged to provide a custom 404 page (e.g.
<http://profectus.asia/not_there>) for a couple of my sites although I
would rather let the visitor's browser give them the bad news.

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

I would prefer to see the site home page menus on the error page but
none of the sites I have mentioned do that. As explained in a separate
thread I have been obliged to provide a custom 404 page (e.g.
<http://profectus.asia/not_there>) for a couple of my sites although I
would rather let the visitor's browser give them the bad news.

1) As explained also in the other thread, your browser does *not* handle
the error, it *only* displays what the *server* send it. It is the
*server* that sends the 404 message, which is either the page that your
hosting has setup or one that you provide.

2) If you have different sites and you want different 404 pages then set
one up for each.

3) The only internal browser error page (which I think you are confused
by) is the one for when your network connected is down.

 

[Adrienne Boswell]

Adrienne Boswell appears to agree with
me <http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info/not_there> and does not
provide a custom error page.

That's only because I've never gotten around to doing it - for myself. For
my clients, I almost always do a 404 page. For example:
[http://csslr.adrienneboswell.com/index9.php]

 

[dorayme]

In what circumstances do you provide a custom 404 error page for your
site? What do you say?

I much prefer to see a custom error page when I visit other sites and
for my site too. It just seems, well, more professional and friendly I
guess. Hence, I use custom pages for 300, 401, 403 and 404 errors.

I would prefer to see the site home page menus on the error page but
none of the sites I have mentioned do that.

http://edmullen.net/not_there.html
http://edmullen.net/index.html
http://edmullen.net/media/
http://edmullen.net/temp/
[/QUOTE]

Yes, these strike a friendly and helpful tone. Only the witch from the
Hansel and Gretel would find anything to be displeased about.

 

[dorayme]

Yes, these strike a friendly and helpful tone. Only the witch from the
Hansel and Gretel would find anything to be displeased about.

Yeah, well, screw her!

Umm, on second thought ...[/QUOTE]

I never thought of you as that desperate. But... you learn something
every day on usenet. <g>

 

[dorayme]

I was doing some
testing on my site and tested in IE7. It did not display my custom
error page. Hmmm. After some searching I found numerous links about
this. The Wikipedia article is decent and succinct:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_404

The article excludes IE 7 from this behaviour:

"Internet Explorer (before Internet Explorer 7), however, will not
display custom pages unless they are larger than 512 bytes, opting to
instead display a "friendly" error page. This default behaviour can be
changed under Tools | Internet Options by clicking on the Advanced tab
and un-checking the "Show friendly HTTP error messages" check box."

But you had trouble in IE7. You better amend the article, Ed.

 

[David Segall]

That's only because I've never gotten around to doing it - for myself.

I'm sorry. I did not intend to draw attention to the absence of the
cobbler's children's shoes.

For
my clients, I almost always do a 404 page. For example:
[http://csslr.adrienneboswell.com/index9.php]

And it deserves a prize for charming 404 pages.

 

[John Hosking]

For
my clients, I almost always do a 404 page. For example:
[http://csslr.adrienneboswell.com/index9.php]

And it deserves a prize for charming 404 pages.

I thought you might be being sarcastic, since when I viewed Adrienne's page
a few days ago, I thought it to be the most unhelpful and useless excuse
for a 404 page I'd ever seen. I didn't say anything, though, since I didn't
want to bash the helpful and friendly Adrienne. I also suspected I wasn't
seeing what I was supposed to see.

And lo! Her 404 page is indeed different now, and also useful, and yea,
verily charming.


What I originally saw was something like this:

++++++++

PHP Error Message

Warning: require(nav_inc.php) [function.require]: failed to open stream: No
such file or directory in /home/a4746384/public_html/csslr/header_inc.php
on line 2

Free Web Hosting

PHP Error Message

Fatal error: require() [function.require]: Failed opening required
'nav_inc.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in
/home/a4746384/public_html/csslr/header_inc.php on line 2

Free Web Hosting

++++++++

It's looking much better now. ;-)

 

[Neredbojias]

Tested in IE7, yes. I made the error files HUGE, like 200Kb. No
effect.
The only way I could get IE to "respect" the convention was to
change
the option as described. Perhaps there was som cache involvement
but, frankly, should I have to be trouble-shooting this at all?

I am not a Microsoft basher by any means, I actually like and respect
their efforts (hell, for all I know I may own MS stock ... sorry, I'd
have to dig for that info). Still, this is beyond the pale. Highly
negative. I find rising many expletives which would have to be
deleted.

Ooooh! Look at that random sig entry below! Cute! Serendipity!!!

Still. What's up with this? Geez. No wonder people hate MS.

The trouble with Microsoft is that they are flabbergasted when you
don't want what they want you to want and cause them the trouble of
concocting something else they want you to want in lieu of their
initial desire-surrogate. This can stack-up arithmatically to such
proportions that they forget what they originally wanted themselves.

 

[David Segall]

For
my clients, I almost always do a 404 page. For example:
[http://csslr.adrienneboswell.com/index9.php]

And it deserves a prize for charming 404 pages.

I thought you might be being sarcastic, since when I viewed Adrienne's page
a few days ago, I thought it to be the most unhelpful and useless excuse
for a 404 page I'd ever seen. I didn't say anything, though, since I didn't
want to bash the helpful and friendly Adrienne. I also suspected I wasn't
seeing what I was supposed to see.

And lo! Her 404 page is indeed different now, and also useful, and yea,
verily charming.


What I originally saw was something like this:

++++++++

PHP Error Message

Warning: require(nav_inc.php) [function.require]: failed to open stream: No
such file or directory in /home/a4746384/public_html/csslr/header_inc.php
on line 2

Free Web Hosting

PHP Error Message

Fatal error: require() [function.require]: Failed opening required
'nav_inc.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in
/home/a4746384/public_html/csslr/header_inc.php on line 2

Free Web Hosting

++++++++

It's looking much better now. ;-)

You have provided another reason for letting the server deal with
errors. The server's response has been thoroughly tested in most
circumstances and in most browsers.

Please note, gentle reader, that I have learned my lesson and used
"server" in the preceding sentence, not "browser".

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Tested in IE7, yes. I made the error files HUGE, like 200Kb. No
effect. The only way I could get IE to "respect" the convention was
to change the option as described.

URL?

IE is known for making second-guesses on protocol issues, such as 404 error
pages that it regards as "too unhelpful", read "too small". Are you
seriously saying that it does that for 200 kilobytes error pages too? Then
you really need to provide a URL.

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

No I don't.

There was an implicit reservation "if you wish to be the least constructive
in the discussion and not just disturbing noise" in my statement. Sorry to
have omitted it.

If you doubt my veracity then YOU test it yourself.

I don't know what "veracity" means, especially in your language, and I don't
really care.

You made a statement about a browser's behavior in a particular case and
refused to provide a URL of a test document of yours - a test document that
would cause IE 7 to behave in a manner different from all other experience
that I have seen published so far, as well as from Microsoft's
documentation.

This seems to rank you as a nuisance and reduces your credibility somewhat
below zero.

However, hopelessly optimistic and philanthropic as I am, I took the trouble
of doing your job and observed that for example
http://edmullen.net/foobar
results in IE's own error message to be displayed on IE 8 when the browser
is set to use "friendly" HTTP error messages, i.e. suppress error page in
favor of IE's own.

However, with the same browser settings, I have no problems in getting error
pages sent by servers displayed, instead of being overridden by IE messages.
I checked the registry*) to verify that ErrorThreshold for 404 is set to 512
(bytes), presumably the factory setting.

Thus, this seems to be a problem with _your_ error handling, in the majority
of browsing situations, so _you_ should be interested in studying it. Maybe
there is something either in the HTTP headers or in the error document that
makes IE treat it as shorter than it actually as. I could have more sympathy
and willingness to help if you had not so strongly resisted attempts at
being helped.

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

Ed Mullen wrote:

I don't know what "veracity" means, especially in your language, and I
don't really care.

<lesson type="vocabulary" lang="en">

veracity:

The adherence to the truth, or the truthfulness of something.

</lesson>

 

[dorayme]

<lesson type="vocabulary" lang="en">

veracity:

The adherence to the truth, or the truthfulness of something.

</lesson>

<lesson type="babbleAvoidence" lang="simpleTalk">

doubt my veracity:

doubt me

</lesson>

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

<lesson type="babbleAvoidence" lang="simpleTalk">

doubt my veracity:

doubt me

</lesson>

Just having some fun...was a ;-) required?

 

[dorayme]

Just having some fun...was a ;-) required?

No, I was just adding to the fun. I know what yours meant. Mine was
about a simpler way of saying what Ed said. I hope he did not mind! <g>

 

[askbargains]

1) if you want to have a friendly UI when the Error happen in your page, you can use the customer Error page ( 404 error)

2) I suggest you read this article
in the smashingmagazine website ( just serach the "404-error-pages-one-more-time" )