Do not annoy your readers – Customize your 404 page

Written by Soumen Halder under Blogging

404 We bloggers are very much aware of this “404 Error : Page Not Found”. We all, more or less try to optimize the design of this page thereby trying to help our readers to find what they were looking for. But most of us just end up with some encouraging sentences or interesting post links of our choice which may not match reader’s need. Let me show you how to give your readers more relevant options in the 404 page so that they don’t have to flee from your blog.

Google Webmaster Tools :

Most of us(bloggers) are well aware of the Webmaster tools provided by Google. Now if anyone is unaware of it then don’t be a minute late. Signup now. After you are finished with registration log into it & follow the steps below.

1. Go to Tools > Enhance 404 pages.

2. Now copy the code given. It looks somewhat like this. But not this. Get yours.

3. Copy this code & paste it in your 404 page within the proper <div> tags.

4. Now you can skip this step if you wish but if you’re familiar with CSS, you can put this additional code to change the appearance of the 404 widget on your custom 404 page. You can put it anywhere in the 404.php.

/* “Closest match” link */
#goog-wm h3.closest-match a { }

/* Heading for “Other things” */
#goog-wm h3.other-things {
color: #8f2831;/*Change this hex code to change the size of the text*/
}

/* “Other things” list item */
#goog-wm ul li { }

/* Site search box */
#goog-wm li.search-goog {
/*display: none;*/ /* If you wish to hide the search-box remove the ‘ /* ’, ‘ */ ‘ symbols over ‘ display ‘*/
}
</style>