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The importance of a custom ERROR 404 page in WordPress

July 16, 2006

Quite a few times I have attempted to access this blog only to find all posts and comments gone!

The first time it happened I almost got a heart attack. I panicked thinking that my blog had been hacked. Each time I clicked on a category or a link leading to a post I got the dreadful message: “Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.”

I implored myself to calm down and to investigate the issue. The first thing I did was to access the blog in FireFox and Opera, and what a relief I felt when all posts suddenly and ‘magically’ re-appeared in FireFox. I refreshed the page(s) a couple times just to make sure I wasn’t seeing ‘Ghosts’ or something similar.

In a nutshell here is what caused the disappearance of posts and comments in Internet Explorer: My IE Browser cache was full and/or corrupted. The browser cache is meant to speed up browsing but in this instance it was the culprit, preventing the viewing of my posts. A problem that disappeared as soon as I cleared the cache.

When a very busy or less technically savvy visitor encounters the same problem, they will most likely go elsewhere possibly denying you the patronage of a ‘Targeted Visitor’, hence the need for a custom 404 - Page.

The default 404 Error page in wordpress is short, cryptic and scary: “Not Found - Sorry, no posts matched your criteria”. Therefore I set out to create a simple custom error page containing more helpful messages for my visitors.

Here is what I came up with: Custom Error 404 Page. It’s simple straight forward and loaded with useful information to make that valuable visitor stay a little longer, browsing my blog and even more important, get the opportunity to search the rest of my site. Note: Also remember to add the custom code to the file: “page.php” - which usually displays the error message: “Sorry, but we are unable to find any article matching your request.” 

To display a particular page, WordPress will look for several template files in your active Theme. The first one it finds will be used to display any given Page. Below is the order of files WordPress will look for:

1. The Page’s selected “Page Template”
2. page.php
3. index.php

If it doesn’t find content or the page you requested, wordpress will display the error message in page.php and not 404.php — so make sure page.php contains a useful error message too.

In this business (Internet Marketing) every single visitor counts!

References:

1. Creating an Error 404 Page
2. Clearing your browser cache

Written by James Opiko · Filed Under Authoring, General Updates, Web-Dev-Design | Leave a Comment 

Website Update - 05.26.2006

May 26, 2006

This update was emailed to all authors on 05.26.2006

Afro Articles is almost three months old and we are kicking like a young stud!

Recently I have noticed many of our website visitors clicking on your ‘profile name’ to find out more about you before reading your article.

A detailed profile authenticates you and you also get extra exposure: You can list as many as four links to your website(s) and a biography as long as 1500 words (HTML allowed) in your profile settings.

Here are examples of complete profiles:
- Profile 1
- Profile 2
- Profile 3
- Profile 4

Also make use of our RSS feeds and Email Alerts located at: http://www.afroarticles.com/feeds/

You can if you want to, syndicate individual or all article categories on your website for free. If you are in need of content for your website, get it here: http://www.afroarticles.com/feeds/

Every now and then please check out this blog for updates and news.

Our forum has not picked up yet. It would be lovely if you signed up and initiated discussions. Click below to go there: http://www.afroarticles.com/portal/modules.php?name=Forums

Note: I need a couple of moderators to help me jump start this forum. If you are interested please let me know

If you have any observations or concerns and need to let me know, please do not hesitate to contact me. I will be happy to address any issues you might have, or even better post it in the forum.

Written by James Opiko · Filed Under General Updates | Leave a Comment 

Social Bookmarking | Social bookmarking bookmarklets

May 17, 2006

To help bloggers and website owners generate traffic, Social Bookmarking is a great tool you can use. Social bookmarking is a web based service, where shared lists of user-created Internet bookmarks are displayed. Social bookmarking sites generally organize their content using tags. Such sites are an increasingly popular way to locate, classify, rank, and share Internet resources through the practice of tagging and inferences drawn from grouping and analysis of tags.

Two of the most popular are Del.icio.us and LookSmart’s Furl.

These two and many others can help drive traffic to your site. All you need to do is to make them available to your users.

Below are few methods by which you can implement Social Bookmarking on your sites using ‘bookmarklets’ –pieces of code(Javascript or PHP) that you can embed into your web pages, blog or forum:

Here is the code: http://www.afroarticles.com/blog/wordpress/Social-BookMarking-Code.txt

There are php options posted elsewhere for both which you can GOOGLE to grab.

Alternatively you may use The Socializer:

The Socializer allows you to easily submit a link to several social bookmarking systems. Instead of having a link to each social bookmarking website, you have a single link to all of them!

The Socializer is a free service from eKstreme.com.

Webmasters should use the Socializer because:

1. Allows you to link to all social bookmark websites using one link. When you add a link to a new social bookmarking website, your visitors will be able to use it immediately!
2. You don’t have to worry about social bookmaring APIs
3. Easy to implement - simple Javascript code and PHP code provided!
4. Provides a good service for your visitors
5. It’s free!

For Blogger, WordPress, Movable Type Integration and more options for Socializer visit: http://ekstreme.com/socializer/

It’s a great tool, try it out!

Written by James Opiko · Filed Under General Updates, Web-Dev-Design | Leave a Comment 

Setting up Permalinks | Rewriting URLs in WordPress 2.0.1

May 17, 2006

Over the last two days I have had headaches setting up URL re-writes for this blog’s Permalinks.

At first I went with the inbuilt option: Date and name based which re-writes the links to this format: /blog/wordpress/index.php/2006/05/17/sample-post/ (No .htaccess updates required). I needed to get rid of the “index.php” in the URL plus the Comment and Main Articles feeds were not working right.

So, I experimented with the options available in Admin:

I set the Permalink Options in Admin as follows:
OPTIONS –> PERMALINK –>

Custom Structure: /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/
Note: Had to make .htaccess UNWRITABLE (CHMODED it to 444) in order for WordPress spit the .htaccess code. Then updated and uploaded .htaccess manually.

While all the URLs seemed to work fine the RSS FEED URLs generated for the MAIN & COMMENTS FEEDS were not working and the pesky “index.php” still appeared in the URLs.

Frustrated, I decided to add a comment to one of the posts and Whola…! the “index.php” disappeared from the URLs and the feeds are now working fine.

I can’t really figure out how this happened but I strongly believe the comment addition had something to do with it.

For additional security, I pasted this code to the .htaccess to prevent snoopers from viewing the file. Also CHMODED the .htaccess file to 644 (Server Default):

What a relief!

Written by James Opiko · Filed Under General Updates, Web-Dev-Design | Leave a Comment 

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