In doing some research for a newish presentation, I’m on the hunt for cool, funny, well-designed and/or useful custom 404 pages. Stumbled across anyone that gets this right? I’d love to see it.
404 Hunt
In doing some research for a newish presentation, I’m on the hunt for cool, funny, well-designed and/or useful custom 404 pages. Stumbled across anyone that gets this right? I’d love to see it.
SimpleBits is the tiny creative studio of designer, author, and speaker, Dan Cederholm. I make websites and things for people like you. Occasionally, I also talk about them here. More →
Dribbble What are you working on? 
Instapaper Icon design 
Sass For Web Designers Paperback + eBook A Book Apart
CSS3 For Web Designers Paperback + eBook A Book Apart
Bulletproof Web Design Third Edition New Riders 
Handcrafted CSS Book and DVD New Riders 
Web Standards Solutions Special Edition Friends of Ed
83 Comments
Some neat ideas here -
Wanted: Your 404 Error Pages
404 Error Pages: Reloaded
SmashingMagazine collected a couple of funny 404′s: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/07/25/wanted-your-404-error-pages/
The Pownce 404 remains my favourite. It all started because Leah has a habit of saying “Ack!” when something goes wrong…
Dunstan has a useful 404 for his blog:
http://www.1976design.com/blog/404
In terms of funny, Homestar Runner nails it in the spirit of the site, down to the “OW! My browser!” drawing and the “Oops! You bwoke it” page title:
http://www.homestarrunner.com/404
Mixx has a great one, only to be outdone by there 500 page
http://www.mixx.com/404
http://www.mixx.com/500
I keep a folder in my bookmarks for just this sort of thing! I’ve only found two good ones so far…
Clean -n- Simple
http://www.underconsideration.com/404
A bit of humor
http://www.motherfuton.com/404.php
Chris Messina has put together a great collection of 404 screen shots.
http://flickr.com/photos/factoryjoe/sets/72157600044330178/
Glad you asked!
http://www.flickr.com/groups/404/pool/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/factoryjoe/sets/72157600044330178/
The Twitter 404 used to be great, until it appeared 404 times a day.
(Technically, it’s probably not a 404 but a 503).
A 404 page I will be using in a future design:
http://media.bryanculver.com/error_pages/404.html
It’s not very helpful to the user, so I don’t use it anymore, but I used to have this one, and I’m still quite fond of it:
spaceninja.com/404.html
I keep mine completely useless
I have a sneaking fondness for my own:
http://meyerweb.com/ui/errors/404.html
It’s a little out of date but still fairly useful. Plus it has its very own header image.
http://thcnet.net/zork
It’s Zork, the entire game.
I threw a quick one up a few weeks ago. No idea is anyone has found it.
http://reverseorbit.com/errors/404.html
I humbly submit my own as falling in the “useful” category. It takes the tail of the url and submits it as a search string, pulling in any results and diplaying them above an index of blog posts.
We did some fun (yet conventional) things for mixx.com. However, it is the 500 page we are especially proud of.
404 Error:
http://www.mixx.com/404
500 Error:
http://www.mixx.com/500
Way back in 2004 ALA wrote up an article on making 404 pages useful.
http://feedeachother.com/givemea404/
not sure if it’s “cool”, but i hope it’s at least marginally useful http://www.salford.ac.uk/errors/404
My 404 lets the user perform an internal search.
Just in case the user is not in the mood to do it, it can click on Top Posts, Last content an categories.
I think I should make it cleaner and funnier, but is useful the way it is.
There’s a collection of 404s at Area 404. May be a little out of date these days though…
http://beyond-design.co.uk/404redirect.html
I like to think mine falls in the useful category :-)
http://locusmeus.com/404.shtml
Twittu.ms 404 is cool, also check out Minimology’s 404.
Funny, I just took care of this for my domain a few weeks ago: 404, 500
Etsy takes it old school.
http://www.expansionbroadcast.com/404
I’m not sure if my 404 page is good enough for the Simplebits list…it’s more functional than funny – take a look at my site, just add ‘err’ after the domain name and have a look! :D
I did this one recently
http://www.enlighten.co.nz/404.aspx
Always been a fan of The Motley Fool 404 haikus (reload to collect ‘em all):
http://www.fool.com/404
Or Kaliber10000′s classic “crash landing” 404:
http://k10k.net/404/
A nice article on 404:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000819.html
http://www.plinko.net/404/
Great old site which combines a how-to, a history, and a gallery of the finest 404 sites. Plus – their own 404 page is hilarious.
I did my best with this one:
http://chicagocomedy.com/404.html
I try to ensure no one sees it accidentally, but here’s mine.
Not sure this counts, but the latest AppleGeeks is definitely well timed:
http://www.applegeeks.com/comics/viewcomic.php?issue=404
- Neil.
There’s nothing here.
We put an easter egg in ours: Click the image
That internet hive of scum an villainy, 4chan.org — not very safe for work — has its own amusing 404-page graphics (see also “404 girl”)
I’m quite pleased with my 404, but even more so with my 403.
I always thought Nathan Smiths at Sonspring was pretty good:
http://sonspring.com/lucy
Wufoo’s are always amusing.
http://www.wufoo.com
Mine is not funny, useful, cool or helpful.
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/adadsda
But it’s on a personal site and you get to see my personality through it!
We did a posting on this recently…
http://blog.pokenewyork.com/?p=222
Weeeeeeee!
It would be super handy if your blog auto-parsed URLs.
http://www.apple.com/404
Consistent and useful.
This has always made me chuckle….
http://homestarrunner.com/404
As with everything else they do.
Urban Outfitters’ 404 sums it up pretty well:
http://www.urbanoutfitters.com/urban/html/404.html
We tried to capture the emotion of a 404:
http://www.fluther.com/404
I found this JavaScript on the web years ago and adapted it for my own 404s
http://www.seanlandry.com/404
http://myfreeimplants.com/asdf.htm
http://www.plinko.net/thebest404pageever
I’ve always thought David Barras has a really humorous error message:
404
Be sure to check out these other pages as well:
unauthorized directory
forbidden directory
internal server error
the absolute, #1, tip top, funniest and best 404 – is no doubt B3TA.
oh yes.
I’ve liked http://www.last.fm/404
Try this – multiple times. :)
http://www.livejournal.com/404
I really like this one, they give you $10 if you find a missing page The Watch Company
This is the url of my 404 and 500 error page
http://ods.dyndns.org/FlexWiki/default.aspx/OdsWiki/CustomErrorPage.html
My favorite error messages are from the hype machine.
http://hypem.com/error/
http://hypem.com/error/404.html
http://hypem.com/error/maintenance.html
A fantastic pool we’ve amassed. Thank you all!
http://pointedears.de/scripts/JSdoc/
The best one I’ve found myself is clever enough to choose a random refresh for the image that helps describe what’s going on. It’s not terribly informative, but still beautiful. Reload the page a couple of times
Found at:
http://konstruct.de/issue_02/
“Due to strong winds from the north…”
The best 404 page I saw is this:
http://vest.si/404
A little of explanation for those of you who don’t speak Slovenian. This is an independent video news site. The spoken text goes like this: “The mystery of the missing internet page will one day most likely be solved by time. From Location 404 for Internet reporting Luka Koper.”
Simple 404 that doesn’t give too much or too little: Michael Dick’s 404 Page.
My friend Andy’s 404 page remains my favorite.
Here’s one we did for Levi’s for the launch of their Girls cut jeans.
http://www.levis.co.za/nothere
I’m quite proud of this one I put together for an education training and services company many moons ago–lots of pertinent, useful information on there to assist/reassure the lost visitor I think:
http://www.sfe.co.uk/bunkum.cfm
The New Yorker uses a cartoon of course
http://azeemazeez.com/404
http://rainfall-daffinson.com/404
I don’t know if you are still on the lookout for these, but Gustavus Adolphus College has a pretty useful 404.
Funatiq has a really nice 404 page:
http://www.funatiq.com/404/
I try to get business back from my 404′s
http://www.wine-wall.com/400.htm
Here’s the one from our soon-to-be-launched site http://www.thebrandsurgery.co.uk/simplebits
Hi, Dan,
I linked to your invaluable resource in my blog, and one of my readers added his 2¢:
http://www.galiacho.es/404
Cheers:)
What I do at MiSc.at is redirecting 404-Errors (and all the stuff behind the slash) to my site’s search (which should be more intelligent one day).
Nice side effect: one can now look for keywords simply by putting them behind the TLD.
Example: http://MiSc.at/404
domino bloggers don’t get the credit they deserve but Jake’s solution at Codestore even comes with an article explaining how its done (maybe there are alternative platform equivelents out there somewhere).
ABC Family’s was pretty humorous, especially for something as corporate as it is: http://abcfamily.go.com/abcfamily/path/section_Home/page_Home.lost
This is my generic 404 page when a site is “under construction”
http://www.jaguarselfdefense.com/missing.html
Try this one.
http://a.viary.com/error.html
Golf site has an interesting twist for their 404…
http://www.florida-golf.org/404.html
Joomla have combined with Artio JoomSEF, a nice plugin/manbot 404 redirect that analyse the URL or URI and re-direct the user to the item that match or else present to you an integrated search box with the name of the URL has a query for the search session…result ? no more 404, user always find the content !
A nice 404 i drawed for StudentMarket