Genii Weblog

How good is your site's error page?

Thu 21 Aug 2003, 01:06 PM



by Ben Langhinrichs
A missed opportunity.  That is what it feels like when I go to a site, especially a product oriented site, and hit an error page such as that below.  This is the results of trying http://www.lotus.com/gibber.htm.  [Warning: All links in this article are broken.  Intentionally, as you would understand if you were reading carefully.]  Why is this a missed opportunity?  Well, try Microsoft's site  http://www.microsoft.com/gibber.htm.  Try Oracle's site  http://www.oracle.com/gibber.htm.  Even try IBM's site http://www.ibm.com/gibber.htm.  Each one has links to places you could go.  Each is part of the main website, with access to menus and other ways to continue, while this error page says "Go away.  We are clueless."  

Having said all this, I must admit that our Genii Software website has had a pretty awful error page previously, but I have been working on building in the kind of site access that I admire in these other sites.  See  gibber.htm.  Not bad.  Unfortunately, our website is hosted by another company (a wonderful group in Calgary, Alberta, Canada called Kyros Systems Associates <-- the only working link in this article), so I have not yet gotten  http://www.GeniiSoft.com/gibber.htm to redirect to my error page yet.  Sigh!

Copyright © 2003 Genii Software Ltd.

What has been said:


40.1. Vince Schuurman
(08/21/2003 11:20 AM)

Got an idea how to link the error page to an actual Page not found error?

R6 only links errors with .nsf in it :(

(see www.openntf.org/gibber.nsf )


40.2. Ben Langhinrichs
(08/21/2003 08:59 PM)

Nope, but I am working on it. If I figure it out, I'll let you know. By the way, I like the openntf error page. Very cool!