Collins, Michael G.

Here’s another good 404 error page that makes me laugh.  This one is part of the newly-redesigned getfirebug.com site, and features the all new Firebug logo.  You can probably find it by typing in any old garbage after the slash, but this link seems to work well: getfirebug.com/asdf

I stumbled across another great 404 page today attempting to access ranchero.com/software/netnewswire/.  I followed a link from a google groups page which was recommending the NetNewsWire feed reader, I guess they don’t check their links very often.  In case they decide to actually put something different at that URL, I’ll link directly to the best part of their 404 page, ranchero.com/images/papa404.png

Everybody who has been on the Web more than five minutes knows the 404, we’ve all seen our share.  In fact, I’m willing to bet most people can recall seeing a default Apache 404 and IIS 404, even if they don’t know what a Webserver is.  It’s relatively easy to change the default error page that your website serves to something more useful and elegant, but the simple fact of the matter is that hardly anyone ever does.  Even when they do, it’s usually just to put some nice styling around the big bold type that says "404 - Not Found" so that it matches the theme of the website.

That’s why I enjoy it when, every so often, I come across a clever, witty, funny, or sarcastic error page.  But I rarely remember them after I’ve moved on to the page I was looking for, and I suppose that even though they may give a few people a chuckle before they hit the back button, the majority of people are gone as soon as the number 404 hits the back of their retina.

So I’ve decided that I will start collecting these witty error pages, here on this blog, in a category called "404".  And to start it all off, I will point you to the 404 page that prompted me to write this post in the first place.  This 404 page is from mikeschinkel.com and I therefore presume that it was created by Mike Schinkel, although I have no other evidence to support that claim.  Enjoy!