ExpressionEngine plugin - Friendly 404 pages

I've written a simple plugin for ExpressionEngine that suggests valid pages to users based on the final segement of a 404 page.

Where am I?

ExpressionEngine can serve 404 pages but once the user reaches the 404 page there isn’t much to help them recover from the error. You could of place a simple search form in the template but wouldn’t it be quicker if we could do it for the user?

How it works

The plugin works by looking at the final segment of the 404 URI. For example http://www.yourdomain.com/about-us/products might be an invalid address which serves a 404 page. By using the plugin on your 404 templates ExpressionEngine will look for pages matching “products”. If a match is found it will be suggested to the user. A simple usability improvement.

Plugin and documentation

The plugin is available on Google Code (ss-friendly-404 in Featured Downoads) and documentation is available there. There is also a thread on the EE Forums.

Tags

Can you help make this article better? You can edit it here and send me a pull request.

See Also