I don’t like the K2 404 page. You’ll only see this when the author (that’s me in this case) makes a fatal mistake or the hosting server has hiccups… but the basic ‘file not found’ page that ships with Wordpress’ most popular theme is awful. The problem is it doesn’t look like a warning page. It offers no additional options, simply points users in the right direction, basically says- “pff, work it out”.

What was not obvious to me was how to override this mess of a information page. How to do it? PHP includes? some form of redirect or did it involve .htaccess

No. To override the default K2 404, which is automatically generated from theloop.php all you need do is place an a file in your wordpress directory called 404.php

Wonderful. What do you think: metacomment.com/blog/404.php

I know there’s a magic plugin out there called ‘recommended posts’, I’d love to tie this in with the 404 page (using the faulty address as a starting point), to give suggestions. Maybe even implement live-search, perhaps a quick email to the blog’s author. Subject: Another 404

The advertiser’s arsenal is one of cliché, bright colour, drop-shadow in fact any obvious visual prettifier of the ‘that’ll do’ variety… overuse of the ellipsis, empathy and emphasis all play a part – blonde norweigan women with perfect shimmery hair do their bit also. The one-liner is the one for me.

Zing, gotta make it zing. “I’d like to teach the world to zing”, nah that’s rubbish. The punchy concise working through of an idea into a marketable, or at least intriguing, sound-bite is both attractive and deceiving… that’s advertising? No, but its a great trick.

This new ‘take’, this new ‘branch’ shall we say, upon the Meta Comment line is as much an aide as a funky new concept. The idea is simple- you type in the box then press enter, and *boom* its saved. For all to see. For all to see, and type and save and do it all over again. Why?

Lets work that one out together shall we?