Agile Business Navigator

Picture this. You've created a great website. Lots of rich content, something you're proud that you've accomplished. You've even got a listing in a search engine or two. Now, you decide to change one file name. Guess what? Until your site gets reindexed (2-6 weeks, sometimes longer) your old page is still in the search engine. What happens when someone clicks on that old, non-existent link? They get the dreaded 404 error. It isn't very pretty and doesn't tell them a whole lot. Worse yet, search engine spiders just stop at that page.

Let's take a look at an example. Apple.com has a great custom 404 page. Try looking for a page that doesn't exist on their site, enter a nonsensical page name right after the apple.com/ in the url address. They list their most popular pages as well as several popular text links. A spider finding this page, could proceed on with the links on the page. Another example: KimberlyBlack.com.

So let's fix this problem with a custom error page.

On your control panel you probably have a link to a custom error page configuration section. It will list the available types of errors you can supply a custom error page for. In my case, I'm going to establish a 404 error page. I click Custom 404 error and am presented with a window with a large text box, several buttons and the filename its saving to at the bottom of the page.

Let's make a simple one. I'm going to enter the html code in the large text box. It will make an html page with the filename it is showing at the bottom of the page.

Error: 404

The file you are looking for does not exist on this website. Please ensure you have typed it correctly. If you still can't find what you are looking for, you can return to our homepage.

Save the contents, a new file will be generated on your website. Try looking for a file that doesn't exist on your website. Now that the file exists on your site, you can perform a get in your favorite html editor and modify the look of the page.

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