Make the 404 error more friendly?
 

At the moment, entering a wrong address on flyertalk.com yields a generic 404 error... perhaps that could be changed to something more friendly? Compare:

http://www.flyertalk.com/wrongaddress
http://www.yahoo.com/wrongaddress
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wrongaddress

Thanks.

At first it seemed to me like this would be a cosmetic thing that couldn't provide real value...

And then I had a thought...

What if the error converted the URL of a post into the ARCHIVE version of the same URL?

Something like
"Sorry, that wasn't found. Try this instead: ...."

Would be real convenient for all the broken links that come from archiving old threads.

Right... the goal of the other "wrong address" pages is to help the user figure out where they want to go. It shouldn't be too difficult to parse the URL and replace "/forum/" with "/pasttalk/ftpasttalk_forum/", and provide the usual "MilesBuzz/TravelBuzz/.../FT Archives" links that appear at the top of each page.

'Make the 404 error more friendly?'

Maybe they could add a few smileys to the error page? http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

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~ Glen ~

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