• Adding Images To Your Web Pages

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

    The Basics

    Adding Images To Your Web Pages – The Basics.

    So you have just got into the online adult business but don’t know your ass from your elbow, you have the simplistic stuff relating to HTML down but, you want to find out how you can start adding banners and images to your pages here is a quick guide to help you on your way.

    What Is An Image?

    The answer, is, believe it or not simple, An image is a picture on a page of your website. There are however, many way to display images on your site from the size of it to the overall effect you want the image to have on your HTML page and from borders around the image and many other things.

    However, I don’t want to blind you with information at the moment considering you need to actually know the basics of adding images before you can start using fancy styles and the likes.

    Adding A Basic Image.

    The HTML code to add an image on any HTML based page is a straight forward one however, before you can use this HTML tag you need to know where on your page you want the image to appear.

    Now that you have decided where you want your image to display you need to use the image tag, the HTML coding to place an image on your page should be IMG. Also, you will need to tell your page where you want the image to come from or, in other words, you need to tell it the source of the image you want to use the HTML tag to do this is SRC.

    For example, lets say you have an image called porn.gif (you need to include the extension in your SRC coding) you would display this image on your page using the following code:

    <IMG SRC=”porn.gif”>

    Simple huh?

    Well, actually, maybe not, for example, what do you put if the images you are linking to is NOT in the same location as the page you want it to appear on? That’s not a problem, all you need to do is use the FULL location of the image in your IMG HTML tag like this:

    <IMG SRC=”http://www.domain.com/images/porn.gif”>

    You should now be able to include images on your pages without any problems.

    Image Sizes.

    Ok we can now include an image on our pages but, what if we want to make this image fit the feel of the rest of our page / site, how do you manipulate the graphic to ‘look’ right?

    There are a number of ways images can be manipulated for example, if you want the image to be 100 pixels wide by 100 pixels high you can add the WIDTH and the HEIGHT tag to your HTML coding like this:

    <IMG SRC=”http://www.domain.com/images/porn.gif” WIDTH=”100″ HEIGHT=”100″>

    That will now resize your image into a square that is 100 pixels wide and high.

    Now we have the image on our page in the right size we require what else can we do with it? Read on..

    Borders + Colors.

    In addition to placing the image and resizing the image on our pages we can also add a border and, a border color to the mage to make it stand out if needed for example:

    <IMG SRC=”http://www.domain.com/images/porn.gif” WIDTH=”100″ HEIGHT=”100″ BORDER=”2″ BORDERCOLOR=”FF0000″>

    As you can see we have now added the two tags ‘BORDER’ and ‘BORDERCOLOR’. The first ‘BORDER’ tag tells your HTML what size of border you want around your image and, this can be any size you want to make the image stand out on your page. The second ‘BORDERCOLOR’ tag tells your HTML code what color you want the border to be again, this can be any color you like to match the rest of your sites pages.

    Linking An Image.

    In addition to resizing, adding borders and colors we can also link our image to a specific URL (the most common form of this is with banner advertising) and, if you want to link your image to a URL you would use the following coding:

    <A HREF=”http://www.sponsorsurl.com”><IMG SRC=”http://www.domain.com/images/porn.gif” BORDER=”2″ WIDTH=”100″ HEIGHT=”100″ BORDERCOLOR=”FF0000″>

    This will create an image that is 100×100 pixels in size, with a border size of 2 pixels in the color FF0000 that is linked to http://www.sponsorsurl.com

    Also, the order of the HTML tags we use is not important however, you should try to get used to arranging them in a certain way to make your work easier if it ever comes to editing your images.

    Hopefully this has been of use to you and you can now see that adding banners and images to your sites isn’t as daunting as you first thought.

    Article written by Lee.

  • Online Dating Programs – Working The Adult Angle

    Date: 2011.02.23 | Category: Sponsors | Response: 0

    As the industry starts to feel the effects over the coming months from the whole Visa situation the one thing that, at present seems to be true of the adult industry is that more and more webmaster/companies are looking to increase their revenues by utilizing mainstream sponsors on their sites. However in addition to this, the adult dating program appears to have been overlooked at least up until now.

    Online Dating Sites – The Options.

    There are actually a few good online personals sites available for adult webmasters to promote ranging from Love At First Click through the Advertising Revenue Service program to specific dating sites such as Match.com and Date.com. One thing is overwhelmingly consistent however regardless of which sponsor you use for your dating traffic, they all have a relatively low payout when compared to the ‘norm’ in adult sites with payouts ranging from $1 to $5 per signup.

    Marketing Dating Sites.

    So how should webmasters market dating sites in conjunction with their current streams of traffic, this is actually a lot easier than you may think for example, almost everyone has an exit link on their free sites, you could utilize this exit link to send traffic to a dating affiliate program in fact, you could also utilize a dating affiliate program on your exit consoles or even on TGP galleries instead of pay sites. The opportunities for you to make money by placing dating affiliate program banners on your web pages are virtually endless.

    Online Personals – Sales Techniques.

    When selling online dating sites there are, in addition to the abundant methods of generating the traffic, many different methods of generating your marketing speech to the surfers, you should ideally try a selection of methods on your sites to find out exactly which method works best for you. As an example of this, if you are using a dating program on a softcore site, you might want to try a hardcore approach to selling your dating sponsor in much the same way as you would sell a hardcore pay site except not as highly graphic. In comparison, if you have a TGP gallery you may like to tell your surfer that rather than looking at sex, they might actually be able to get sex for a change. The ways in which you can entice your surfers to your dating affiliate program are virtually limitless.

    Marketing Dating Sites – An Overview.

    Whether you are already using or are planning to use dating sites, the one thing you must do is ensure that you choose wisely not only the words for selling the site to your surfer but also the placement of the promotional material, a well placed text link can have a higher impact on your overall sales than a badly placed banner and well, the same is true in reverse, find out where you are missing out on opportunities to upsell your surfers to an online dating site.

    Article written by Lee

  • Promo Material – Make The Most Of Your Marketing

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

  • Displaying Special Characters On Your HTML Pag

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

    In order to display certain characters within your HTML pages, you must use a special code. The codes below display the HTML code and the character when displayed on your web page. To use any of the characters displayed within the chart, copy & paste the HTML code to the left of the character you would like to use.

    HTML Code Browser View HTML Code Browser View HTML Code Browser View HTML Code Browser View
    &copy; © &#33; ! &#95; _ &#157; 
    &reg; ® &#34; &#96; ` &#158; ž
    &nbsp; &#35; ` &#97; a &#159; Ÿ
    &quot; &#36; $ &#98; b &#160;
    &amp; & &#37; % &#99; c &#161; ¡
    &lt; < &#38; & &#100; d &#162; ¢
    &gt; > &#39; &#101; e &#163; £
    &Agrave; À &#40; ( &#102; f &#164; ¤
    &Aacute; Á &#41; ) &#103; g &#165; ¥
    &Acirc; Â &#42; * &#104; h &#166; ¦
    &Atilde; Ã &#43; + &#105; i &#167; §
    &Auml; Ä &#44; , &#106; j &#168; ¨
    &Aring; Å &#45; &#107; k &#169; ©
    &AElig; Æ &#46; . &#108; l &#170; ª
    &Ccedil; Ç &#47; / &#109; m &#171; «
    &Egrave; È &#48; 0 &#110; n &#172; ¬
    &Eacute; É &#49; 1 &#111; o &#173; ­
    &Ecirc; Ê &#50; 2 &#112; p &#174; ®
    &Euml; Ë &#51; 3 &#113; q &#175; ¯
    &Igrave; Ì &#52; 4 &#114; r &#176; °
    &Iacute; Í &#53; 5 &#115; s &#177; ±
    &Icirc; Î &#54; 6 &#116; t &#178; ²
    &Iuml; Ï &#55; 7 &#117; u &#179; ³
    &ETH; Ð &#56; 8 &#118; v &#180; ´
    &Ntilde; Ñ &#57; 9 &#119; w &#181; µ
    &Otilde; Õ &#58; : &#120; x &#182;
    &Ouml; Ö &#59; ; &#121; y &#183; ·
    &Oslash; Ø &#60; < &#122; z &#184; ¸
    &Ugrave; Ù &#61; = &#123; { &#185; ¹
    &Uacute; Ú &#62; > &#124; | &#186; º
    &Ucirc; Û &#63; ? &#125; } &#187; »
    &Uuml; Ü &#64; @ &#126; ~ &#188; ¼
    &Yacute; Ý &#65; A &#127; ? &#189; ½
    &THORN; Þ &#66; B &#128; &#190; ¾
    &szlig; ß &#67; C &#129;  &#191; ¿
    &agrave; à &#68; D &#130; &#192; À
    &aacute; á &#69; E &#131; ƒ &#193; Á
    &aring; å &#70; F &#132; &#194; Â
    &aelig; æ &#71; G &#133; &#195; Ã
    &ccedil; ç &#72; H &#134; &#196; Ä
    &egrave; è &#73; I &#135; &#197; Å
    &eacute; é &#74; J &#136; ˆ &#198; Æ
    &ecirc; ê &#75; K &#137; &#199; Ç
    &euml; ë &#76; L &#138; Š &#200; È
    &igrave; ì &#77; M &#139; &#201; É
    &iacute; í &#78; N &#140; Œ &#202; ?
    &icirc; î &#79; O &#141;  &#203; Ë
    &iuml; ï &#80; P &#142; Ž &#204; Ì
    &eth; ð &#81; Q &#143;  &#205; Í
    &ntilde; ñ &#82; R &#144;  &#206; Î
    &ograve; ò &#83; S &#145; &#207; Ï
    &oacute; ó &#84; T &#146; &#208; Ð
    &ocirc; ô &#85; U &#147; &#209; Ñ
    &otilde; õ &#86; V &#148; &#210; Ò
    &ouml; ö &#87; W &#149; &#211; Ó
    &oslash; ø &#88; X &#150; &#212; Ô
    &ugrave; ù &#89; Y &#151; &#213; Õ
    &uacute; ú &#90; Z &#152; ˜ &#214; Ö
    &ucirc; û &#91; [ &#153; &#215; ×
    &yacute; ý &#92; \ &#154; š &#216; Ø
    &thorn; þ &#93; ] &#155; &#217; Ù
    &yuml; ÿ &#94; ^ &#156; œ &#218; Ú

    Whilst the above list is by no means complete, it should contain the most useful characters and codes for you to build your sites using the special characters with ease.

    Article written by Lee

  • Tips For Submitting To TGP’s

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: TGP | Response: 0

    One of the most popular ways for getting traffic to sites these days is to submit galleries to TGP’s and because it is so popular there is a lot of competition for getting listed. If you like, it is a buyer’s (TGP’s) market, with the supply of galleries exceeding the demand. For example, at Richard’s Realm we only list about 60% of the galleries submitted and that’s after we’ve filtered out unwanted free hosts, free email addresses and submission bots. If we didn’t do that we would be listing about 20%-30% of all submissions.

    Before you begin

    Submitting to TGP’s is a numbers game. It’s all about volume and percentages. The amount of money your gallery generates can be estimated using a formula with 4 elements:

    Total Hits To Gallery X Click Through Ratio X Signup Ratio X $ Per Signup = Total Revenue

    So, for example, 1 in 25 surfers to your gallery clicks on a banner or a link, you use a sponsor paying $30 a signup and you have a 1:400 signup ratio with them from your TGP traffic. The formula then becomes:

    Total Hits To Gallery X 4% X 0.25% X $30 = Total Revenue

    You can see now that the only thing remaining that will affect your Total Revenue is the Total Hits To Gallery. If you increase the Total Hits To Gallery the Total Revenue will also increase.

    Of course, experienced TGP submitters also know that you can work on improving the other elements of the formula to improve Total Revenue. They tweak their galleries and change banner and link placement to maximize the Click Through Ratio. If it is improved and rises from 1 in 25 (4%) to 1 in 20 (5%), their Total Revenue increases overall by 20%.

    Building the gallery

    Examine the formula above and you will see that two elements can be manipulated at the gallery building stage: Click Through Ratio and Signup Ratio.

    It is always said, and surprisingly often overlooked, but select a sponsor for a gallery which complements the gallery’s content. For example, if you build a big tits gallery use a big tits sponsor. With more and more TGP’s becoming categorized people surfing the big tits category will be looking for bit tits and are more likely to be interested in a big tits sponsor!

    In addition, be sure to use sponsors which are not overly-used, sponsors which are little known. If you go through a TGP you will see the same sponsors and banners showing up all the time. If a surfer sees a banner 10 times they are only going to click on it the once. So even if you build the perfect gallery with top notch banner placement and pictures, if the surfer clicked on the same banner on the previous gallery they’re not going to click on yours!

    Selecting TGP’s

    There are hundreds of TGP’s you can submit to. It is usually advantageous to select TGP’s that only post your type of gallery, as well as the more generic ones. For example, submit to TGP’s which only list big tit galleries or galleries with one-legged midget lesbians (if that’s your niche). The more targeted traffic will usually result in better click-through ratios and better signups, especially if you’re using a new or little-known sponsor for the particular niche.

    TGP’s with a moderate level of traffic that send a few hundred hits tend to be quite good. Admittedly, to get any real volume you need to submit to quite a few, but consider using TGSW to do the bulk of it. My reasoning for using the smaller TGP’s is that they tend to list fewer pages and the surfers tend to be less “professional” and adept at dodging banners.

    Submitting your gallery

    There are no real tricks to this bit, but it is very important to remember that TGP’s usually get far more submissions than they need or want. You must try your best not to give them a reason to reject your gallery:

    • Read the rules carefully and follow them. The TGP webmaster doesn’t put them there for fun and if you break them it’s possible you will be blacklisted.
    • Look at the galleries already listed on the TGP to get some idea of what the webmaster likes.
    • Don’t try to be smart and use different names and email addresses to avoid the per webmaster submission limits. Although galleries can look very different, reviewers have a good memory and can often recognize designs, layouts and descriptions. If they spot you trying to cheat you’ll probably end up getting blacklisted.
    • Take a look at their TGP and see what kind of description they like, Adult Buffet have very different descriptions to Richards-Realm. This might not determine whether or not you get listed, but it’s a chance to get a good description of your choice and, hopefully, more hits.
    • Select the right category for your gallery. If you submit your gallery to the “Teens” category and it should be in the “Mature Women” category it will get put there or rejected. If you get the gallery listed in the wrong category you may get more hits, but if a surfer is expecting a nice young lady in the pictures he’s just going to hit his back button and look at the next gallery in the list – probably not even giving your banners a chance to load.

    Monitoring your gallery

    Once you’ve submitted your gallery you should keep an eye on how it performs. View the stats to see who listed you, how many hits they sent and how much you made from the gallery. It is even worthwhile to create galleries dedicated to specific TGP’s, so you can monitor their performance even more closely. If a TGP sends lots of hits but no signups it’s probably worth no longer submitting to them or changing the gallery to see if you can improve the click throughs or signups. Compare before and after stats if you make changes in the gallery layout or sponsor to see if they’re working.

    Whatever you do keep tweaking and monitoring your galleries to get the best possible performance for each of the elements in the revenue formula.

    Article written by Richard

  • Bandwidth Explained

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Hosting | Response: 0

    Bandwidth is the total amount of data that can be sent in a given time between two computer devices. The more bandwidth that is available, the faster the server.

    Any webmaster expecting a decent amount of traffic to their adult site will require a web hosting package that includes a large amount of bandwidth. This is so important, especially with the growth of your online business and, ultimately your sites. The more bandwidth your server has, the larger the number of surfers who will be able to view it at the same time, and the access it quickly will be. If you don’t have enough bandwidth, surfers will not be able to access your site as quickly, and that may turn them off which in turn, will mean they will leave your site.

    For this reason alone, it is important to select a hosting company that can offer you a great deal of bandwidth. As an example, larger hosting providers will have T1 lines or fiber-optic relays to access the Internet; these will provide a fair amount bandwidth. Another way is to get a dedicated server which, in turn, gives you exclusive access to your server’s connectivity instead of sharing it with others, as such allowing for maximum hardware performance.

    To calculate your bandwidth needs, you must know how large each page on your site is, including the graphics and any script usage you may have. Then, you multiply that by the number of views you expect the site to get every month.

    For example, say you have three 5k images on your page and a 2k HTML file – you would have 17k of data on that page. Multiply that by your expected page views (let’s say in this case it is 100,000 per month), and you get 1.7 G of data to be transferred that month for that page alone. Now calculate this for each page, and you will know approximately how much bandwidth your entire site requires.

    The best way of using bandwidth efficiently is to keep the size of your html pages low. In other words, ensure your HTML programming is adequate enough to use minimal amounts of coding for the purpose you want and, that your photos and graphics are small. To reduce photo file sizes you should always use JPEG format, which can reduce files up to 5% of its original size. Make sure to use the GIF format for graphics, as opposed to TIFFs or BMPs, which are generally much larger in file size.

    If you attach URLs to your IMG SRC that link to another person’s images without their permission, this is known throughout the online industry as hotlinking which, costs the person you are linking the image of money and not yourself. For this reason, hotlinking, is looked upon dimly.

    The unfortunate truth is that hotlinking is rife in the online industry. However, lets not let that deter you, by utilizing a file called .htaccess on your server, you can prevent other dishonest webmasters hotlinking your images.

    As with most things in this industry, you need to shop around to find the best prices available to you. However, that said, as a general rule of thumb, a gig of transfer can cost between $1 and $5 these are usually thought to be good prices for a gig of bandwidth. You can also get certain hosting packages that have a specific amount of bandwidth included in the price, however, the one draw back of these types of deals is that, if you go over that limit, you will either need to pay and excess bandwidth usage fee or, upgrade your hosting plan.

    Article Written By Lee

  • Payment Processors – Advice And Information

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Billing Solutions | Response: 0

    For many, the first step in launching a successful pay site is to find a billing processor that can adequately and efficiently handle all levels of the membership payment process. The processor must also have the technical savvy to grow with your site.

    One such payment processor, iBill, is currently the premier provider of such solutions worldwide. They handle the payments in real time and all of the back-end services that enable you to run your business.

    Of course, there are many issues to consider when deciding on a payment processor apart from their commission rates on your sales, including the following:

    How do they handle the billing itself? Is it processed in real time? If your customers do not have immediate access to your site, they may decide not to join.

    How do they supply your account reports? You may want to know at 3 a.m. the number of members you have and how they are rebilling. iBill allows you to access detailed, real-time reporting 24 hours a day, so you know exactly who is a member of your site and, more importantly, what their username and passwords are. No one wants to find a member has posted a username and password on a trading site. If this occurs, iBill’s real-time reporting tools give you the ability to stop this immediately.

    How comprehensive are the payment options? Do you want to use credit cards, or do dialers or check transactions suit you more? The best way to maximize sales is to accept a full array of payment options. The more options you offer your members, the better the chance you’ll keep them rebilling month after month.

    How good is customer service? Does your payment processor offer access to live representatives 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? If so, you’ll resolve customer issues quickly and effectively, which reflects well on you and encourages loyalty from your members.

    How good is the fraud protection? Internet fraud is a constant threat. Your payment processor should have state-of-the-art fraud protection systems to guarantee the integrity of every transaction.

    Are there multilingual features for international members? Due to the global reach of the Internet, you must find solutions for foreign customers. Ideally, your payment processor’s website should be multilingual and easy to navigate in several key languages, such as German, Spanish, French, and Japanese.

    Choosing the right payment processor is a long, arduous task that, if done right, will result in a long-lasting working relationship. In turn, your members will feel confident in your site and stay with it. We hope this article has given you insight into finding the right billing party for your membership or online store. If you need any further assistance please feel free to contact us directly using the form on our site (URL below).

    Article provided by Internet Billing Company

  • Traffic Filtering – Country Specific Redirects

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

    To some, actually marketing to foreign surfers is a waste of time rather than a business practice. Unfortunately, they are missing out on additional revenue. We are already beginning to see some of the major sponsors in the adult industry embracing these foreign markets and, not just by utilizing dialers.

    However, filtering your traffic base is often the hardest part of this money making equation. That is where the following piece of PHP coding can come in handy.

    PHP FILTERING CODE

    <?
    $user_lan = $HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE;

    if($user_lan==’de’) {
    ## German
    $redir_url = “http://www.germanlanguagepageurl.com”;

    } elseif($user_lan==’fr’) {
    ## French
    $redir_url = “http://www.frenchlanguagepageurl.com”;

    } elseif($user_lan==’it’) {
    ## Italian
    $redir_url = “http://www.italianlanguagepageurl.com”;

    } elseif($user_lan==’es’) {
    ## Spain
    $redir_url = “http://www.spanishlanguagepageurl.com”;

    ## US traffic or Rest of world not defined above
    } else {
    $redir_url = “http://www.yourmainpageurl.com”;

    }

    header(“Location: $redir_url”);
    exit;

    ?>

    So, we know that the above piece of coding can redirect surfers based on their country of origin however, in order for you to maximize this to its full potential you will need to know the country specific codes (Also called ISO 639 codes) for each of the main browser languages. Some of these are as follows.

    da | Danish
    de | German
    en | English
    es | Spanish
    fi | Finnish
    fr | French
    it | Italian
    jp | Japanese

    The problem you now have is finding where to send your filtered country specific surfers to. Of course, there is always the dialer option however, this is not going to be as lucrative to your wallet as what most people will have you believe.

    In fact, I very rarely use a dialer on my foreign traffic instead, I tend to send them to a language specific tour page from one of the big sponsors and, if they do not sign up to that sponsors site, this is the point where I throw a dialer at them and, if the dialer still doesn’t make any money off the surfer I then recycle the surfer for a fresh one through a toplist or banner exchange heavy page.

    In doing this I find it is often more productive than ‘regular’ English speaking traffic as, if you give the surfer something they are looking for, they will be more inclined to buy.

    Hopefully this article has given you some insight into filtering and using your foreign traffic as oppose to just sending them off to a dialer program.

    Article written by Lee

  • Mirroring Adult Sites – Stage Three

    Date: 2011.02.23 | Category: Promotion, Tutorials | Response: 0

    So we hit stage three of our tutorial in this stage we are going to make some pages for our top 5 AVS systems. However, as we did in the last tutorial with the new TGP galleries we created we are going to use the same content and same pages that we have already built. On with the tutorial…

    Anyone who build AVS sites will know that you need to have a standard site layout. This usually consists of an entry page (or a warning page), a navigational page (or in our case our menu.html page) and some gallery pages.

    So the first thing we need to do is open up the warning page. Once this page has been opened we now need to do some editing of the page, what I would suggest is moving the warning text to the lower half of the page and at the top making some ‘juicy’ sales text, depending on the niche you are targeting with this site you may also like to add a couple of the original thumbnail images at the VERY top of your page however, these should NOT be linked to the full size image.

    Once you have edited your page to a reasonable standard for the AVS you now need to save this page in the /FreeSite/AVS/ folder that you originally created on your HD. I would suggest saving the page as something like avs1.html or the name of the AVS you will be using this page for.

    Once you have done this you now need to duplicate this page but save it as a different name in again, in the /FreeSite/AVS/ folder so you will end up with avs1.html, avs2.html, etc.

    At the moment these AVS pages have no AVS script on them so, we need to visit the AVS system we are going to be using and fill out the details to have the AVS generate an AVS signup page script for us. Once we have the coding that the AVS provides we now have to place this on our avs1.html page. You should repeat this for each of the AVS’s you wish to use and save each instance of the generated AVS script to a separate AVS*.html page.

    be aware, that when you are putting your information into the AVS to generate the script, you should enter the ‘members area url’ as the page we created for our navigation so, the AVS script location will be /FreeSite/AVS/avs1.html and, the members area page will be, /FreeSite/Menu/menu.html.

    Once you have placed the script on our avs.html pages you should now have the following sites ready:

    1) 50 Pic Free Site With Pics On HTML Pages.
    2) 5 TGP Galleries With Pics On HTML Pages.
    3) 5 AVS Entry Pages.

    Now we are starting to see how using one set of content can amount to a mass of sites all of which can be sending traffic to our sponsors and, to our surfer trap.

    This is where stage three of our tutorial ends however, in our next tutorial we will continue to make some more sites and in an effort to get some traffic we start to play with the ones we have currently created.

    Article written by Lee

  • Designing A 404 Error Document

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

    Designing A 404 Error Document.

    Now that we know how to use .htaccess let’s get into how exactly to effectively design a 404 error document page. Here are a few tips when building your document:

    Keep The Design Constant.

    That is, whatever design your web site supports, consider keeping that design when building your error document. This is not mandatory, however. If you have a good reason to stray from your design, then do so. Otherwise, keep it constant.

    Use Attractive Dialog.

    Do not use the word error. Error signifies something is terribly wrong, and while that may be so, you should give that information to your visitor in a very friendly way. Instead, consider writing “Sorry, the page you were looking for is not available at the moment”.

    Include Contact Information.

    Obviously, you want to fix the error, so give the user every opportunity to e-mail you about the error. Some users will not bother to do so, but you still need to give them the opportunity.

    Keep The Visitor Moving.

    Often, 404 error pages are like road blocks, or brick walls that the user cannot pass through. You need to break through the barriers and allow the visitor to keep traveling through your web site. If your web site supports a search capability, include a form on your error document to let them search for the information they were originally seeking. At the very least, include a link to your home page.

    Give Them A Site Map.

    When the user clicks upon a page that is no longer available, or was mistyped by the webmaster, consider adding a link to a site map page, or include your site map right on your 404 error document, so the user can get their bearings within your site, and can locate their desired content quickly and easily.

    Give Them Help.

    List tips on your error document page to help the visitor diagnose the error. For example, ask them to double check the URL in their browser’s address bar. If it’s correct, politely ask them to e-mail you to report the error. Also suggest that they visit your home page (or search utility) to find the information they are after.

    List Some Popular Links.

    Provide the user with a few links to your most popular content areas of your web site, as it is more likely they were searching for that content than anything else.

    As you have seen, error documents are more important than you may think. Merely having a custom error page shows you have put forth effort on your web site and want to help the user find the information they need. Error documents are easy to create and adds professionalism to any web site.

    Article written by Lee

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