Using our non-found page to help look for missing persons
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2013-10-18 17:54:16 - Graham EllisHow things move on... our "Page not found" page - HTTP error 404 - showed a picture of our home, as we live at No. 404, many years ago. We moved on to running our search engine there, taking the words people had entered as parts of the URL and offering alternatives, but in time the type and volume of searches lead us to the feeling that this might now be significantly useful. So we switched to a much simpler page which send out only a tiny fraction of the traffic, but provided links to key points and searches to help people find what they're looking for.
That system works well (I think - I haven't added a survey or anything onto the page to ask how useful it is as a 404!) However, we can do more with the page, and we have now subscribed to the Not found service.
An <iframe> within our page calls up a picture and text from the missing persons database, so 404 page visitors get not only the not found page, but a (re)minder of a person who's missing. "The page you requested was missing, and so is Jane Doe". All very kitch, I suppose, but wouldn't it be marvelous if it helped find just one missing person over coming years. I know the chances are low, but they increase with thousands and thousands of sites signed up - but the cost to those sites is virtually nothing, and the stakes are high.
If you run a web site, please find out more about this service. Please visit http://notfound.org/index.php?locale=en_GB (If you're not from the UK, you'll be able to change your locale once you're there. Yes - this IS intended to look like like an advert!
There's nothing to stop me posting the code / iframe here too... this is the sort of message you'll see: