I hate it when I come from Google, land on a page that I was looking forward to reading and find a bland 404 page!
What is a bland 404 page? It is a page that reads something like this,
We apologize but this page, post or resource does not exist or can not be found. Perhaps it is necessary to change the call method to this page, post or resource.
That 404 message is actually the one that comes with the Me Gusta WordPress. Cool theme, lame 404 page!
Number One 404 WordPress Plugin
The previous theme that I used with Elegant Themes, I hard wired my 404 page so that it looked half way decent.
It works but with an issue. Every time I updated my theme I would have to go back and recode it.
WordPress might think that Code is Poetry but I think it is a pain in the rear end!
I fixed my 404 page issue with one simple WordPress plugin called 5sec Proper 404.
Benefits of 5sec Proper 404
- stop hardcoding your 404 page in 404.php
- select any page to be used as the 404 page
- use 5 provided shortcodes (recent, popular, similar posts; search form, Google search widget) to make better, more useful 404 pages
- eliminate broken links and backlinks with a detailed 404 log
- provide clickable links (equals more page views) instead of a dead end
