404 Error – Customize Your 404 Error Page For Laughs
Today’s article is all about having a little fun. You know in our line of work, we are quite isolated. We sit at a desk and write, type, build marketing strategies, etc. Sometimes when I sit down to write – I don’t want to! Sometimes I just want to have a little fun – but productive fun. So I thought about this…
I wrote an article a while back on how to change your 404 error pages in Thesis. It is a reader favorite, so check it out if you use Thesis on your WordPress blog (and you should:). I thought I’d follow up on it by explaining how to have a little fun with your error pages, now that you know how to customize them.
Today I added a photo to my error page that I’ve customized a bit for my site. It’s a fun photo of a dog holding a paper in his mouth that says the word “oops” on it – symbolizing that the dog ate the page that they were looking for on my site. Cute huh? (Well my dog did actually use to eat my papers:)
Take a look: http://LisaAngelettieBlog.com/error/
So if you’re not inspired to write an article or work on that latest chapter of your new book – just relax a bit and have a little fun with the 404 error page code on your site 🙂
To add your fun image to your 404 error page, all you have to do is:
1. Upload the image to your site. Make sure you’ve sized it appropriately using Photoshop or my new favorite toy Shrink-O-Matic.
2. Get to your 404 error code. I access mine through the Thesis Openhook WordPress plugin.
3. Before the text for your error page, add your image with a little bit of html: <img src=”http://yourimage.com” align=”left”>
4. Make sure that you add the little align part if you want your image on the left and your text to wrap around it to the right. You could also do the opposite by aligning the image to the right and wrapping the text to the left as well. If it’s a big horizontal photo, you may not have to align anything and allow it to be on it’s own separate line with the text under it.
Finally – just have fun with it! Also, if you have any more tips for adding a little “flavor” to your 404 error pages, leave them in the comment section below. We’d love to hear your ideas!
Lisa Angelettie
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Great tip for today, it reminded me that I still haven’t completed my 404 page yet. To say it’s been a loooong work in progress isn’t doing any justice.
You work too hard John 🙂
Great idea and great advice….im going to mess with my site today!
I think its these little things that also stick in peoples heads and tend to bring them back to the same site again…
I think so too BB Guy 🙂