Beautiful and Useful 404 Error Pages for Inspiration
Errors don’t need to be ugly. On the Web, any links that are broken result in a 404 Not Found error message. There are two ways you can address this issue when your user navigates towards a broken link.
Option 1: Present the user with an old and boring default error page, which displays no information other than "There’s an error."
Option 2: The second solution is to present them with a custom error page design that can suggest alternative things they can see or do in order to resolve their problem.
Which one do you think is better? Obviously, the second option.
Here is a collection of 30 beautiful and creative 404 Not Found error message pages.
1. Mark Dijkstra
2. Chris Jennings
3. Carsonified
4. Astuteo
5. daniel karcher
6. HootSuite
7. Mixx
8. Frye / Wiles
9. Wufoo
10. deviantART
11. ferdaze.com
12. habrahabr.ru
13. Future of Web Design
14. Popscreen
15. Twurn
16. Propeller
17. CUOMA Design Studios
18. Product Planner
19. TattooSales.com
20. Spreadshirt
21. Bloqhead.com
22. Club Penguin
23. Jim Cromwell
24. Kochatelier Berlin
25. Acro Media Inc
26. South Park Studios
27. swissmiss
28. Dundee Living
29. Hornets247.com
30. iStockphoto
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75 Comments
Benjamin Weigl
May 30th, 2010
One of mine: http://aroma-gusto.de/error.html
Fine Collection by the way. Cheers Ben
Odin Dutton
May 30th, 2010
Google, I hope you’re listening!
Connor
May 30th, 2010
Doesn’t having a personalised error page mean that Google recognises the page as a normal page, rather than an error page? In other words not a 404 page?
Web Sauna
May 30th, 2010
dude, what a nice collection you have here… :)
thank You for an inspiration… have to do my homework in this field as well (blush)
Marcell Purham
May 30th, 2010
Those are great 404 pages. Most of them are very artistic as well. Great roundup
Simon
May 30th, 2010
For 404′s surely it’s very important to have your site’s navigation prominent so people are likely to click elsewhere around your website. I like the one I put on my football (“soccer”) website… if you know football it’s a funny image
http://www.the6yardbox.com/shepsdfsdf
Brett
May 30th, 2010
#23… When you see it…
David
May 30th, 2010
The one on http://www.sevenbyfive.net is cool given it is a photography blog ?
Http://www.sevenbyfive.net/404
bill
May 30th, 2010
http://www.notonebit.com/flort.php
Informative AND awesome!
Nick Burd
May 30th, 2010
Great round up… but I’ve seen so many 404 page round ups lately lol.
great post.
Thanks
Rishabh Agarwal
May 30th, 2010
Thank you so much for the Thumbs Up, guys.. I’m glad that you all liked it :)
Lukas
May 30th, 2010
Work of mine – http://error.horde.lt/
Michael
May 30th, 2010
Take a look at this one from stufbuff http://www.stuffbuff.com/widge%20aq.html
Marc Gayle
May 30th, 2010
Mine isn’t as ‘designy’ as the others, but it is customized and I happen to think it’s nice. It’s my son :)
http://marcgayle.com/404.php
Marc Gayle
May 30th, 2010
He also is quite opinionated :)
http://marcgayle.com/contact/
Luke Desroches
May 30th, 2010
Blizzard’s error page is my favourite:
http://us.blizzard.com/lkasjdflasd?rhtml=y
Free Vector Graphics
May 30th, 2010
Indeed, great 404 pages!
FFCommunicator
May 30th, 2010
Good article. 404 error pages are often overlooked in the scope of development as many see them as a low priority. While it is a page that you never may intend for anyone to see, it is the one that may hold a potential customer or client if something does go wrong. If you give them nothing but a crude error, chances are they’ll hit google and one or your competitors instead of back. If you make it something that catches their attention and draws them back into the flow of your site easily, you may salvage that relationship and possible customer.
Odin Dutton
May 30th, 2010
@connor: http://www.google.com/404 with the amount of data google has a helpful 404 page would be nice. “Did you mean ***?”
1MiniMe
May 30th, 2010
You should also show best maintenance pages for inspiration.
I want to submit our page which is probably one of the funniest :D
http://www.1minime.com/_app_offline.htm
BTW: We make design 3D statues of yourself from a simple picture, fully handmade.
Kewl Luser
May 30th, 2010
great!!
Juan Ce
May 30th, 2010
Here you have one that uses random videos: http://www.unblogged.net/404
Smashy Design
May 31st, 2010
Very nice collection. Thanks for sharing…
devDsine
May 31st, 2010
lol, the south park!
Denis
May 31st, 2010
My 404: http://hyperian.ru/404
Daniel
May 31st, 2010
Great collection, however, most of them were listed in a few other 404 collections.
Benjamin Weigl: Great Work! I’d say you KO the whole collection here:-) The whole website aroma-gusto.de is also worth navigating!
You can check mine 404 as well: http://dan-designs.com/404
Oles
May 31st, 2010
South Park Studios :)
BronsonID
May 31st, 2010
I’m surprised that this isn’t used more:
http://www.bronsonid.com/asadsad
Sasha Baksht
May 31st, 2010
How come you missed Techbridge’s one http://www.techbridge.ca/404.html? ;)
Karol
May 31st, 2010
Stunning collection. Great pages!
Estevão Mascarenhas
May 31st, 2010
You can see our 404 page here:
http://bit.ly/bNcdzc
We developed an fork game with the most used SEO terms, and it’s only CSS3 and jQuery. :)
Santiago Martinez
May 31st, 2010
Thanks! Guys. I’am Santiago from CUOMA, one of the 404 page creator.
Regards!
Jordan
May 31st, 2010
Nice list. Good stuff here.
Kelle
May 31st, 2010
I like minutedock’s one
http://minutedock.com/404
trash
June 1st, 2010
mine http://trashnet.de/404.html
Alex Crooks
June 1st, 2010
You might like our 404 :)
http://www.somethinginteresting.co.uk/404
robert
June 1st, 2010
Nice 404 page in the list and in the comments too. Quality stuff here.
NicOnlyOne
June 1st, 2010
I’m not a fat ass, i’m big boned =)
http://niconlyone.com/error/404.html
JV Media
June 1st, 2010
These are all great! Here’s ours: http://www.jvmediadesign.com/error.html
Michel
June 1st, 2010
Really very good, very intelligent post with ideas.
I have to make changes in my 404 page.
pradeep
June 2nd, 2010
Great Buddy……..
Neha
June 2nd, 2010
nice collection dude!
Frinley
June 2nd, 2010
Thank you so much for the 404 collections,I ma getting some new ideas…thanks again.
scruffyrobot
June 4th, 2010
Great collection, but mine wasn’t on there – http://scruffyrobot.com/scruffy
Benjamin Weigl
June 5th, 2010
@daniel,
thank you very much. I’m glad you like the Site :-)
Alex Sabaka
June 6th, 2010
http://turbofilm.tv/404 It’s so beautiful error page =)
Tom
June 7th, 2010
This is neither beautiful nor useful, but it’s one of the first custom 404 pages I made for my personal site. It’s a Flash movie that shows random images along with an accompanying soundbite.
http://www.all-about-tom.com/error
Andrej
June 9th, 2010
Thank you ! Nice collection !!
abner caballero
June 20th, 2010
great it’s a goodest..
genial estan buenisimas
Alberto
June 25th, 2010
404 Pages of the 4chan are among the most brilliant.
Jameos
June 25th, 2010
@Alex Crooks…your site tells me that my IE8 is IE6.
Laurent
June 28th, 2010
Nice collection.
Here’s ours: http://www.providenz.fr/404/
Zhaph
June 30th, 2010
@Connor – That depends on how your server is returning the page – the concern is that a lot of those pages are returning status codes of “200 OK”, which search engines will treat as a valid page response, and index the page content accordingly.
If you’re going to have custom 404, and you should have one, then you really need to make sure that your server is returning it with a response code of 404, so that search engines don’t return it in results: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?&answer=93641
MicroAngelo
July 1st, 2010
#13 – Future of Web Design – deserves special mention if you go to it with a webkit browser such as Chrome or Safari, as it has an amazing and surprisingly simple CSS3 animated spinning globe to fit with the “Houston, we have a problem” space theme.
The globe’s not in your screengrab, so you may have missed it.
Multimedium
July 13th, 2010
Love the examples above. Please take a look at ours too: http://www.multimedium.be/404
Swat Chap
July 19th, 2010
Nice post!
Here’s one more good one: http://anassin.com/404
pagina12
August 1st, 2010
Here one more :) from a news paper in Argentina http://www.pagina12.com.ar/404.html
Ionut Mantescu
August 11th, 2010
i have one on my website.. http://www.dmdesign.ro/404
Mark Dijkstra
August 20th, 2010
Nice list!!!
Thanks for including my cool 404 page ;)
pulsa
August 24th, 2010
thank You for an inspiration.I have to make changes in my 404 page.
Florian Schommertz
September 10th, 2010
I like blizzards 404.
Jack Moore
October 14th, 2010
Wicked 404′s here we really like our 404 check it out, should give you a laugh!
http://www.kitedigital.co.uk/404
J Appleseed
November 2nd, 2010
Here is another one at a company named Exuberate that makes iPhone apps:
http://www.exuberate.me/404
Ryan
November 14th, 2010
I like this one: http://thewebmotel.com/error/
Elle
December 31st, 2010
I’ve bookmarked this for updating my page 404 as soon as possible, thank you!
Alex
January 17th, 2011
Love some of these examples, especially the grim reaper! Our 404 page: http://www.carbuzz.co.uk/404/
PDQ
January 21st, 2011
Nice collection! Every 404 page should be a little humorous – you at least need to take the edge off of what just happened to the end user. We recently updated our 404 page after seeing so many others: http://www.pdqinc.com/404.
Akhtar
February 18th, 2011
awesome collection. i hope u will love this one as well: http://smashingwall.com/inspiration/404-error-pages-examples/
Dylan
March 7th, 2011
We love this one – helping us to relax!
http://willoughbystewart.com/404
Carolina
May 17th, 2011
Very nice collection. Here’s mine http://www.carolinakaucher.com.ar/404
William
June 2nd, 2011
Here are two 404 pages I created: http://www.enginenewity.com/404.html and http://www.agostographics.com/404.html
William
June 3rd, 2011
Here are two of my designs:
http://www.agostographics.com/404.html
http://www.enginenewity.com/404.html
Marian
July 28th, 2011
I love this one: http://www.readerbuzz.com/404.php
Chris
August 3rd, 2011
OK, this is all I needed to make me realise that standard 404 pages just aren’t good enough. Time to put my thinking hat on.
Douglas Karr
October 12th, 2011
We’ve got a nice one as well :)
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