404 Trap Basics
Some of the people who know me from the old days are groaning right now. Saying under their breath, not 404 Traps again … Yup, it’s time to start talking about 404 Traps … again. Also, for some of the more recent readers, these blogs give me a place to jot down my ideas and get them out of my head in a written form. After a while I will be taking them and making articles and white papers about these topics, but I just need to get the info out of my head for now 
Anyway, 404 Traps … The HTTP protocol has a listing of different error codes and definitions for those errors based on what is going on during the particular transaction. Anything in the 200 range is a success, anything in the 300 range describes client redirects, anything in the 400 range describes client errors and the 500 range is for server errors. For the purposes of this we are only interested in the 400 range. Most, if not all, modern webservers have a way to create custom error messages for your web pages. The intention is to allow you to create a page that looks similar to your website to deliver your error message to the client browser. The hack that I am proposing is to use the custom error code to create your website, not just to deliver error messages. The simple fact that you are reading this blog entry is proof that this concept works. You are in fact surfing this site that is currently running over 90% of the content based on 404 Traps.
