Why Do Designers Not Use Custom 404 Pages?

August 18, 2000 2:10 PM

Okay this isn't really about the weblog format, but more about these sites in general. I am really curious to know as to why most of the web-designers here do not use customized 404 messages? So far I have only seen Glassdog.com, & 37signals.com use their own 404s, saturn.org used to have a custom 404, but it no longer does.
The reason I ask is because in general most webloggers are great web-designers, and I would've figured that they would all be using it. And I think it would be really interesting to see what everyones 404 would look like.
posted by riffola to general weblog-related at 2:10 PM (2 comments total)

but most designers are lazy (speaking for myself).

I've never gotten around to making a 404 for metafilter or my personal site, when it's really quite simple to tweak the server settings for it.

I never remember to do it actually. Whenever I have some spare time, the first thing that pops into my head is rarely "hey you should make a quirky, funny 404 page!"

but now that you've reminded me, I will (when I get some free time).
posted by mathowie at 7:28 PM on August 18, 2000

You're right that explains it perfectly, but as I said, it sure would be interesting to see what you guys do with the error messages.

I sure would like to see what you come up with :)
posted by riffola at 9:37 PM on August 19, 2000