First I want to say that I am a subscriber to Caroline Middlebrook’s blog, and have been for quite some time. I don’t normally review ebooks, because to be quite frank, I have only found a few that are actually worth my time to read. Caroline’s ebook entitled “How to Develop Money-Making Niche Sites with WordPress” has both good and bad points, but it does have something for most people that are interested or are new to installing and using WordPress.

The Good
The best part about Caroline’s book is the sections on how to setup WordPress. She walks through setting up WordPress using Fantastico De Luxe that is available from most web hosts that offer the cPanel web hosting control panel. Once WordPress is setup she shows you how to change your permalink structure, add a new theme, add some plugins like the WordPress Database Backup plugin, All in One SEO Pack, and how to activate the Akismet Spam Filtering plugin. These are all pretty straight forward and good advice for people just getting started with WordPress.

The Bad
The ebook walks you through setting a niche website, so instead of creating posts, you create pages. This is essentially the same as creating an old fashioned static website that you will add content to and then let it sit. Why do this? According to Caroline:

Why would you want to? Because one of the most common ways to make money on the Internet today is to pick a popular topic and put together a small website consisting of articles related to that topic and monetize the site with ads. The traffic comes from search engines and once the site is setup, it just runs on auto-pilot.

I have to question whether making niche websites that never get updated is still popular. Sure if you visit web master forums and check the sites for sale section you will find any number of niche websites for sale, but the money being made is not from running the websites, it is from creating them and selling them. Not to say you can’t make money from a niche website. I have the odd one and they can bring in some money, but the energy it takes to promote them and rank them high in the search engines to make decent money can be difficult depending on the niche.

For you to make more than enough for coffee on a daily basis you could build ten of them or a hundred and just let them sit, but then you could just go and use a free service such as Blogger to create the sites. Your development time would be less and you would not have to cover any hosting or domain name costs. Some people would consider Caroline’s method to be just another way of creating spam blogs, or splogs.

Overall
Caroline has done some good work on the ebook, and I believe the sections on installing WordPress and WordPress plugins would be helpful to people just starting out with WordPress or for those that just want a handy reference of things that they need to do when they install WordPress again. I have to question the overall value of creating a niche site the way she describes. At the very least if you do create a site similar to this one I would highly recommend you consider adding a blog portion to the site that you update. This will help provide more value to your readers and hopefully draw them back to your site.

As a side note Caroline also recommends using BlueHost for your niche site. I have used BlueHost in the past and did not have a very good experience with their service. Perhaps it has improved since I had an account with them, but I would recommend you explore another web host. I like Hostgator, which is where Epiblogger is hosted currently. Rhett has been using MidPhase lately and appears to be happy with their service. Two other possibilities for you to consider.

Edit: Opps I was wrong about Rhett’s web host. The nameservers said midPhase but the actual host is AN Hosting.

Epiblogger is still pretty new and in the rush to open the doors we did not take a lot of time to dust the cobwebs off of all the corners around the place. One of the cobwebs that I wanted to get around to sprucing up is the Epiblogger 404 error page. Many WordPress themes come with a 404 Template included in the theme, but often they are nothing special. As you can see the Epiblogger one does not give you much information.

I know what I like in a good 404 error page. I like to let users know that what they were looking for is no longer there and help them to find either what they came looking for in the first place or something even better. That usually means giving them some options to search the site, links to places where they might find what they are looking for and sometimes links to the most popular posts.

I thought I would go looking for some inspiration before I worked on the 404 error page here at Epiblogger so I checked out what the Technorati Most Popular blogs use for 404 error pages. I also checked a few other blogs that I thought might be interesting. I was looking for 404 error pages that helped readers to continue to browse the blog and were friendly. I thought I would find some creative uses of 404 error pages on the top blogs. I started to grade them as I went along. What I discovered surprised me.

Default Web Server 404 Error Page

These blogs returned nothing but the default web server error page. Not a lot of information is given in the web server default error page. It certainly does not give a user that has lost their way much to go on to find what they were looking for. There is not even a friendly link to the blogs home page. For this reason alone I gave all of these blogs a grade of F.

• Boing Boing
• Ars Technica
  Is actually less than a typical web server 404 page. Simply returns “The requested file was not found”.
• Daily Kos
• Perez Hilton
• Seth Godin
  I really enjoy reading Seth Godin’s blog. I am surprised that the 404 error page is the default web server one. Is this not a missed marketing opportunity?
• ReadWriteWeb
  Returns nothing but a blank page. No error code, no text, nothing. Better not get lost over here. If it was possible to give a lower grade than F they would have gotten it.
• Kotaku, the Gamer?s Guide
• Talking Points Memo
• Drudge Report
• O’Reilly Radar
  I expected more from O’Reilly. They write some of the best books on web technologies out there (I have several myself) but their 404 page is the default Apache? Sad but true.
• How to Change the World
  Guy Kawasaki’s blog is one that everyone needs to spend some time reading. Just don’t look at the 404 error page.
• Wired Blogs
  These aren’t the blogs you’re looking for. You can’t go about your business. Move along to a boring Apache 404 error page.

Prettied Up Web Server 404 Error Page

These blogs returned a custom or modified 404 error page, but they are close to the default web server error page. They also do not offer a lost user much to go on to help them find what they are looking for. Because they offer little to no help to the lost user they also get a grade of F.

• Gizmodo, the Gadget Guide
• At0mica.net

Default Blogging Platform 404 Error Page

These pages return pretty much exactly what Epiblogger returns. Just a note saying the page is not there. Some had a search box, but considering most templates have a search box included in them they offer nothing more to help lost readers find something of interest.

• TechCrunch
  Standard WordPress 404 page. No better than Epibloggers, except full of ads.
  Grade D-
• The Official Google Blog
  Default Blogger page not found error page. I suppose you can’t do much when you are on Blogger. You take what they give you.
  Grade D-
• Crooks and Liars
  Very basic. The blog template and error code.
  Grade D-
• Mashable.com
  Just offers a search box in the sites template. Their sidebar is really long, and a search box does not take a lot of room on a page so, the sidebar runs over the footer and makes the whole page look like a mess. Time to fix it up Mashable.
  Grade D-
• uthink
  It looks pretty but does not offer much to help you find anything.
  Grade D
• Search Engine Land!
  Gives you a search box, but the rest is just your basic 404 page.
  Grade D
• dooce
  Offers a nice Google ad but the rest is the blog template.
  Grade D-
• Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO
  Has a search box and that is about it. For some reason I thought the famous Google software engineer would have something more.
  Grade D
• John Chow
  Other than his template advertising the 404 error page is surprisingly bare. Just a little blurb about the file not being found. I am surprised he does not have a specialized ad rate just for his 404 page.
  Grade D
• Lorelle on WordPress
  I really thought Lorelle would have more than just a search box. Her WordPress blog usually offers so much. I thought the 404 error page would as well.
  Grade D

Links to Categories/Other Pages

These blogs make it easier for lost readers to find what they are looking for. Most offer not just a search box, but also links to the home page, archives, categories or popular posts. They give readers a place to go instead of a dead end while still letting people know that there has been an error.

• The Huffington Post
  Offers a nice search box and links to the different sections of the site.
  Grade C
• icanhascheezburger.com
  I thought they would at least have a funny picture of a cat, but it is pretty boring.
  Grade C
• Problogger
  Offers a search box, a way to contact him and links to the most popular posts.
  Grade C
• Smashing Magazine
  Not only offers links to the home page but they include one of their posts talking about 404 error pages. Lots of great information. Probably the most informative 404 error page I have ever seen.
  Grade A
• TreeHugger
  Offers a search and links to the home page and recent posts. Informative and useful.
  Grade C
• Dosh Dosh
  Offers a Google search and links to the most popular posts.
  Grade C
• Copyblogger
  Offers a link to the home page and some hints at how to find what you are looking for. This was close to being placed in the default blogging platform 404 error page section. To be honest I expected more from Copyblogger.
  Grade C-
• ShoeMoney
  Lets you know something went wrong and offers excepts of the latest posts. It was surprisingly simple but effective.
  Grade C+
• GigaOM
  Links to categories and author pages.
  Grade C
• A List Apart
  I had high expectations for A List Apart. They offer links to the home page articles and the about page. The page is the best written 404 page I think I have seen.
  Grade B+
• Neatorama
  Offers links to the most popular posts, but uses images. Some are pretty funny. My favorite was the Top 10 Coolest BBQ Grills image. How I wish I could BBQ…but I digress.
  Grade A-
• Lifehack.org
  Offers you a list of the archives, popular posts and a search box.
  Grade C
• 43 Folders
  Offers similar options as other blogs. A search box, most searched for pages and popular posts. The popular posts section is divided up between popular now and most popular.
  Grade C+

Redirects to Home Page

These blogs redirected the 404 errors right back to the home page. You would not even know if you had made a mistake or not. I had to watch the headers using Firebug. Often I would not even get a 404 error, but a 301 or 302 redirect. While I can understand why you would want to redirect people to the home page on a 404 error I think the server should at least return a 404 error code to the browser. For this reason I gave these blogs a grade of F.

• Engadget
• Lifehacker
• TMZ
• Think Progress
• Valleywag
• The Consumerist
• Gawker
• Scobleizer
• The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
• Joystiq
• Zen Habits

Conclusion

Overall I looked at just under 50 blogs and their 404 error pages. What did I learn? That the state of 404 error pages on blogs is atrocious! I count 25 top blogs that I consider failing at helping users that find their site by broken links to be able to easily find something useful and interesting on the blog.

I was also surprised at how many of the top blogs listed by Technorati have 404 error pages that are the default. It is so easy in the majority of blogging platforms to create a custom 404 error page that there is no excuse not to do it. If I was not writing this post I would have had the 404 error page here at Epiblogger done in under 30 minutes, and that is if I ran into a problem.

The only blog that I thought made a great use of their 404 error page was Smashing Magazine. They not only gave readers helpful hints on how to find the information they are looking for they also delivered a complete post on 404 error pages. Congratulations you did something creative and useful for people that could have just ended up at a dead end.

I have to give the top blogs a horrible grade of D- for their error pages. Considering how well these blogs produce quality content they certainly did not take the time to look at their error page and how they could use it to help visitors find what they wanted and possibly even become regular readers of their blogs.

What did I decide to do with the Epiblogger 404 error page? Well I added a link to the home page, a search form and our archives. I also added something fun lower down on the page. Many of the 404 error pages are all just dead serious, but there is no reason why you can’t have a little fun with your 404 error page. If I was to grade our 404 error page, well we went from a D- up to a C+. We offer readers options to find the information that they are looking for, but there are no links to our most popular posts or excepts from the most recent posts.

A welcoming 404 error page can be helpful to encourage a lost reader to become a regular reader. Take a few moments to take a look at your 404 error page on your blog and see how you can improve it to help readers find the information they are looking for. What unique features would you add to your 404 error page?