Default server 404 error pages are usually fairly unhelpful to users, so creating a custom one can help a user be less frustrated at a broken link if there are options to get back to the homepage of the site, or a search bar to search for their goal.

As you may have seen, I created my own 404 page, and set it by editing the .htaccess file. Read more about that here. Recently, I stumbled upon the phenomenon of HTTP status cats – see them here. I then edited my 404 page to include one of these to keep my angry, lost users a bit happier.

Matt

How to search the web, faster

In Google Chrome, you may have noticed when you type for example “amazon.co.uk” it prompts you to “press tab to search amazon.co.uk”. You either press tab (or space if you have finished typing all of it) and it quickly searches Amazon (using Amazon’s search) for whatever you type after. Useful? But we can do better.

Head into the “wrench menu” of Google Chrome. If you don’t have Google Chrome, get it, you won’t be disappointed, and are unlikely to go back to another browser. In the wrench menu, under options, under Basics, hit “Manage Search Engines…”. Under here are all the search engines you have encountered. It shows what you must type (e.g google.co.uk, 7dayshop.com) to search their respective sites. However, you can change this keyword to what you like, for example I changed YouTube’s to “yt”. So if I want to search YouTube for christmas songs, I just type “yt christmas songs” into my main Google Chrome address bar, and bingo – it searches YouTube for some festive tunes. So try out a few yourself, I also added another for Facebook (just copy and paste the search URL code to a new entry at the bottom) to “whois” so I can type “whois Peter Griffin” and it will search Facebook for Peter Griffin (Jeopardy reference :D).

I’m unsure how the picture will come out, as its the first blog post I’ve added a photo to. Now searching YouTube or Facebook is quite useful, but what can’t you quickly search for from the Google Chrome address bar that you CAN search with from Google.co.uk? Images. Maps. Shopping. I’m feeling lucky. There’s a few – so Google away, find the search code, add it as an entry under Manage Search Engines, and you are away! Want me to get you started?

For I’m feeling lucky, create an entry – call it what you like, give it a keyword (I just used “\” – when will you want to search just that?) and use the code without quotation marks:

“{google:baseURL}search?{google:RLZ}{google:acceptedSuggestion}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}sourceid=chrome&ie={inputEncoding}&q=%s&btnI”.

So add away, maybe do one for YouTube, Wikipedia, eBay and your other favourite website.

Recommendations: Have a search on Google for those search code’s, they will be out there somewhere. If you are feeling generous, comment them here so we can all add them :).

Matt out