Customized vs Standard 404 Error pages

The Error 404 ” Page Not Found” is the error page displayed whenever someone asks for a page that is simply not available on the site. The reason for this is that there may be a link on your site that was wrong or the page might have been recently removed from the site. As there is no web page to display the web server sends a page that simply says “404 Page Not Found”. Now thw advantage of using customized 404 error page is highly useful because it enables you to benefit from traffic that would have otherwise been lost. But one dark side to it is it can make maintaining the site more difficult. Usually whan a server encounters a 404 error it records the details about the event into its log file. For example you accidentally linked to”abutus.html” somewhere in your page instead of using the correct filename “aboutus.html”. The functionality offered by log files makes it a great help to keep your site relatively free of insite broken links. If you replace the standard 404 error page you cannot utilize this feature. Finding and fixng errors will become a difficult task causing them to pile up over time and deteriorate the image of the website. So in my opinion one needs to audit the website to ensure that at all times the pages on your website are 404 error free. But once can customize 404 error pages if they need to with relevant links to all inner pages of he website. My favorite example is http://www.apple.com/seroundtable/

Here are some cool 404 error pages: