Applies to: Everyone
Error pages, not something we spend a lot of time thinking about. But they can be quite interesting. This came to mind because this website went offline this morning and had a horrible error page. But some error pages are really interesting!
What happened this morning?
This morning for 22 minutes and 1 second this website was offline.
I honestly don’t know what happened, these things occur from time to time and if you came to the site during the problem you would have seen a horrible message saying “Database Connection Not Found” or something.
I have now changed the error page so it should say something a little more friendly and include our email address.
Fun Error Pages
Many websites have fun error messages for when their website goes offline!
There is the famous Twitter Fail Whale
Read more about the history of this here.
YouTube’s unhappy face
Google Chrome “No Internet Connection” Game
Press spacebar (or tap the screen) to play the game if you see the dinosaur
Some are interactive, this one asks you to type in words
Or a confused horse
http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/404
Want more?!
Check out these 24 ‘fun’ error page designs
I love Number 8, personally.
Sadly our error pages look a bit boring!
404 error version 1 (this shows when something is very wrong)
404 error version 2 (this shows when something is wrong but the site is still working, it would be nice if it said “Error” on the page)
500 error (this is shown when something is very very wrong, like what happened today)
So there we are! If you’ve got any questions just let me know.
Happy error page hunting!
Mike 🙂
PS I can confirm, the gov.uk website has a very boring, but helpful error page https://www.gov.uk/errororr
April 24, 2017 at 10:57 pm
Finally,I promised a closing update.
The black line has not reappeared. (I hesitate to go searching for it!).
Keep up the good work.
A call-out from my most excellent man would have cost an hourly rate of £70.00
Yours
George
April 25, 2017 at 9:18 am
Fantastic, thank you so much for the update. I have added your black line problem to my list of odd things and how to fix them list (which is currently still in my head) but if anyone has this in the future it’s there as something to try.
Thank you
Mike 🙂
April 21, 2017 at 11:19 am
Message for Mike(who may not be in today).
Subject-black bar on Acer computer screen.
By using the mouse arrow my wife moved it out of the way and then off the top of the screen altogether. Well done,Mrs.Raine.
This coincided with a message about Snip-which we don’t use .
So we have not phoned Acer. i will report back to you next week if there is anything to say.
April 24, 2017 at 4:03 pm
Ah fantastic! Glad you sorted it!
I have no idea what would change caused that! How strange! I assumed it was your screen which was broken! Good work 🙂
Thanks for the update
Mike 🙂