We’ve done it through junior high, it expanded longer through high school, then on college it became chapters. No matter how many times a person have done it, writing articles has proven to be a task many has continuously avoided. Now at a time when writing articles could help your job or work, facing the job at hand can be still faced with unfriendly behavior.

While there are a great number of people who do not have the same attitude in article writing as others, there are still those who would rather walk in piping hot coals than do some article writing. What set other people apart from other towards article writing is that they are prepared and has some methods and procedures in writing articles.

One of the methods you can use to prepare yourself when tasked to write in article is creating an outline first. Creating an outline for all your articles makes you prepared. You have an idea of what to do first and make a plan for your succeeding steps. Being prepared makes the job easier and faster. Being organized will allow for disorientation to be shunned away.

An outline can act as the design or blueprint for your article. This will guide you in creating the introduction, body and conclusion of your article. Here in this point, you can write down some of the ideas and sentences that you feel will look good in your article. This could be some of the focal point that could help make your article creative, interesting and appealing to a reader.

A carefully planned and fully prepared project would guarantee and ensure a problem and worry free procedure that can virtually go without any hassles. Creating an outline for all your articles will get you ready and breeze through writing an article in no time at all. Here I will provide you with some tips and guidelines in how to create an outline for all of your articles.

Do a couple of brainstorming and jot down your brilliant ideas first. Think of some ways to attract the interest of your reader. Designate a time frame where you can write down all the ideas that you can use for your articles. By this time you should have done all your research and information searching. Review and reread your ideas and notes, gain mastery and sufficient familiarity with your topic so that writing them down later own would be easy for you.

The next step is to discover your sub topic and sub titles. As you would provide a first sentence for your article, one that would immediately grab the attention of your
reader, you would need some as well for your sub topics. To be concise, you would need to get all the facts that will support and go against your point.

These are the frames or skeleton of your article, now its time to add the flesh and the meat of your article. You will need to connect all your paragraphs and sub topics. This will form the body of your Article. While the introduction will usher in the ideas of your paragraph, you will need a conclusion. The conclusion will wrap up your points and drive in what you are saying in your article.

The outline for your article would also require you to write a draft first. This may take more than one attempt but remember that it is called a draft for a reason. Your outline shall be perfected as each draft is written and this draft is meant for your eyes only so there’s no reason to feel ashamed. As you go on, you will clearly see the bigger picture and write an article that will perfectly suit what is demanded of it.

Reread and reread what you have written down. Always refer to your outline so that you wont drift away from what you had first written down. Its not hard to be caught in the moment and get lost in your writing frenzy. Your outline will help you keep in track. All those hours spent in outlining your art

There are currently many discussions in the webmaster forums on contextual advertising programs and the changes they are going through. Which program currently has the most ‘publisher friendly’ terms of service? Which company values it’s publisher’s more? Which will pay me more? Which will be better in the long term…

And the most common, simple question: "Which one is best"?

Is there a solid answer to this question? Here are some of my thoughts on the subject.

The internet is an evolving creature by nature. It is not the same creature that it was ten years ago, or even ten days ago. It’s ALWAYS changing. Every single day, hour, minute, and second, something new is added to it. Someone is uploading their own personal creation at this very moment, helping to forge the web’s overall shape.

So if it’s always changing, then to survive in it’s environment we must be VERY flexible and evolve with it.

Why is this pertinent to PPC programs like Google’s Adsense, Yahoo Publisher Network, and the truckload of other companies launching their versions? Because they know how the online world works, and have most likely planned their options far in advance. Most of these programs have a TOS (terms of service) that reflects it.

Let’s take a deeper look.

In the Google Adsense TOS it clearly states:

"Google may at any time, in its sole discretion, terminate all or part of the Program, terminate this Agreement, or suspend or terminate the participation of any Site in all or part of the Program for any reason."

Any reason? In my eyes that also translates to ‘no reason’ or explanation. Nothing will be due to you should they terminate your relationship. They hold a royal flush, you didn’t even get dealt a single card.

At this point there are lots of readers that are nodding their heads and thinking, "that’s why I went with Yahoo Publisher’s Network"…. If you are, you’re in for a surprise.

In the YPN TOS it states their version:

Section 15.b "We may suspend or terminate our provision of Matched Ads to you at any time, with or without notice, for any reason or no reason, with or without regard for how well Your Site or Your RSS Feed is performing, the quality of user traffic coming from Your Site or Your RSS Feed, or any other factor, in Overture’s sole discretion."

The list goes on and on and on. If you read the TOS of MOST affiliate programs available to website publishers you’ll find similar clauses. Clauses that YOU AGREE TO simply by clicking a little checkbox during the signup stage.

But it goes deeper. Those TOS agreements usually share another component. Almost every one of them gives the company the right to change, add, or delete any part of the TOS at any time, usually without notice to you. They also can sell your account off to another company. They can do ANYTHING they want with the terms. It’s YOUR responsibility to keep checking back to see if it’s been updated or changed.

They hold all the power. The reason they maintain these rights from the first moment of your participation is that they are aware of the web’s constantly changing nature. They are not able to foresee what terms will be necessary in the future. So their high paid lawyers are adding and changing those TOS agreements seemingly on a daily basis, in an effort to protect their company
by any means necessary.

So is the "Made For Adsense -PPC" website model still a good business plan?

In the beginning of the Adsense-PPC business model, many people earned a lot of money by focusing on just contextual advertising promotion and building sites oriented to content that generated high paying clicks. It was a gold rush. In internet time standards a really long lasting one. One that has resulted in MILLIONS of websites built with only one goal, getting paid. A wild west style run for the mines.

But similar to the demise that eventually followed the discovery at Sutter’s Mill, those people that are now running to get in on the PPC gold rush are lucky to find a flake or two for their efforts.

The search engines are now clogged with junk websites, zero content websites, circle jerks, redirects, scripts that generate content based on a search, etc. The mass amount of low quality has made the advertisers that foot the bill react, and they are jumping ship at record rates.

Forcing the PPC companies to exercise their right to change or terminate their agreement, falling back on that trusty TOS that you electronically signed. Many times esulting in termination and nonpayment for the website owner. If it’s a company that doesn’t have a strong TOS, then it might result in the company’s demise, also leaving you without compensation.

So back to the original question… Which should I choose?

My advice to you is to diversify your business plan as much as possible. Build different revenue streams for your overall web income. If you don’t want to expend the time and effort to build and maintain a portfolio of sites, then consider additional affiliate programs for the site you do own or plan to build. Incorporate different affiliate programs into your site.

I started in this business a long time ago, about ten years now. An eternity in the electronic world. But even when I started, one of my mentors was fond of saying that he would rather get 100 checks for two dollars than one check for $200. His reasoning was simple. If you focus on one company for your income, and for ANY reason it dries up, you’re left with nothing. The rent doesn’t get paid.

If you focus on building a multifaceted business plan though, you might just make it.

You might just survive this ever changing animal we call the web.

Until next time,

Chuck Crawford

Web Development – a Complex Task

We are living in a real eBusiness era with more and more companies realizing the importance of having an online presence. Yet, these companies still don’t understand that the Internet is more than just a global network connecting billions of computers. Internet has succeeded in doing what power and territory-hunger rulers were only dreaming about. Internet defines and unites the global village.

It is this village opening new ways for commerce, and with the milliard inhabitants out there, the competition is harsh and the struggle for first positions in major search engines makes it even harder for many low-budget eBusinesses to deliver what the Internet users are really looking for: quality content in an adequate package.

As content is “food” for the search engines too, it is vital for the web designers to find a balance between substance and design, in order to keep both the robots and the users happy. So far this seems to be a distant ideal, since web designers seem not to be able to focus on both of the issues. This is where the idea of SEO expert comes in handy. Yet, because paying a small fortune on SEO and another on web design doesn’t sound very appealing to low budget eBusinesses, there are companies offering an “all in one” solution: graphic design, coding, programming, content management, marketing and SEO – and they call this web development.

The question is: can big results be achieved with little money? Not really, but it is not impossible to keep it up with some of the most experienced developers if the basic rules are respected. Many new Internet entrepreneurs believe that all they need to do is to put up a web site. Nothing could be further from the truth.

A web site can mean the difference between success and failure. While time, money and experience are needed to achieve astonishing results, basic principles are the ones keeping a website away from failure.

Major Don’ts

First rule when you create a web site is: do not frustrate your visitors.

Difficult navigation is what drives away more than 87 % of the Internet users. So if you have to be innovative, try it another way, not by creating impossible menus and confusing layouts. Brand your web site. Respect your visual standards used in your offline activities. Don’t use different colours and styles for each web page. Consistency is what you need to be easily remembered later.

The design is one of the most powerful tools a web site has. It tells the surfer how professional your business is. Don’t use annoying flashing banners, blinking texts or arrows. Keep it simple, easy to read. Decent.

As an Internet user yourself you’ve probably experienced the frustration of waiting for a web page to load. This happens with most of the flash sites but also with other graphic-based web sites. Slow downloading is what drives away more than 84 % of the Internet users, according to NetSmart.

Unless you have a world-known web site everyone dies to visit, forget the flash idea. Don’t get this wrong, flash is a great technology, perfect for astonishing online presentations, but when it comes to the first page of your web site, you’d better find another way to amaze
your visitors. With more than 85 percents of users out there having flash plug-ins, there are still the 15 percents that don’t. So try not to ignore a minority.

Be sure your visitors are able to find enough information about your company, your services and products and make sure they are able to contact you if they need. The information should be actual and up to date, unless you run a history web site. Try to offer interesting content, as more than 50 % of the visitors tend to walk away if the text is boring. Write and design with your visitors in mind.

Don’t use “under construction” or “coming soon” pages. Your visitors will hate you if you do. If you are not ready with the content, just don’t publish that page.

Don’t use pop-ups – they are as annoying as blinking images, or maybe worse. Google, Yahoo, and Earthlink… they all provide toolbars with pop-up blockers. Have you ever wondered why? That’s right: because people hate them. If you really want to point out a new great service or product you provide, than try to attract your visitor’s attention another way. Create a “What’s New” category for instance – and keep it actual if you do.

Make sure your web site is compatible with all the browsers. Forget the “best viewed with” idea. People will walk away instead of changing their browser to view your site.

There are many other don’ts when it comes to web development. Point is if you stick to the basics you stay away from failure. And success will come along, in little steps.

1. The content is separated from the design

Because you are able to create a separate Stylesheet and link it to all your webdocuments, you have great control over how your website looks. So if you want to change a certain aspect of your page, you only need to alter one file: your Stylesheet!

This Of course, generates some great flexibility. This flexibility is not available when your website is using tables for layout, inline font tags or inline defined colors.

A single CSS file can contain positioning, layout, font, colors and style information for an entire web site.

2. You site uses less bandwidth and loads faster

Because stylesheets are so lightweight, your website will load much faster. The main reason is because you do not need table layouts anymore for the positioning of elements. Since text loads really really fast your website will be visible in a flash.

This means that visitors will be happier when surfing your website. They only have to download the Stylesheet once, and it’s automatically reused for every page. So the only thing that needs to be loaded is the actual content.

On average a website will load five to ten times faster if it makes use of cascading style sheets.

3. Your website will automatically gain better search engine results

With CSS, you can position any element, anywhere you want. So if your menu is at the bottom of your HTML document, you can bring it up using absolute positioning. The reason this is useful is to make sure the search engine spiders pick up the main content first.

Another advantage you automatically gain is that your HTML code is much cleaner. So the search engine spider will not have to separate the junk code from the real content.

So make sure you put your logo text and your menu at the bottom of your HTML document at put it at the top using CSS!

4. CSS is compatible with newer browsers

Because more and more browsers are used other than Internet Explorer on a Windows machine, you need to be sure that your website is accessible by all major and newer browsers.

By using webstandards, defined by the w3c, you are making sure your content is viewable in the future.

Because there are so many browsers these days, it is impossible to test your website in all these browsers on different configurations. Coding to standards is then the only practical solution.

5. CSS can be used to display the same content on different media.

Because you are able to define different stylesheets for different media you have great flexibility in presenting your content.

The printer for example, is a medium on itself. If someone prints out your website, you will be able to modify the look of it. Add an extra black and white logo, remove the advertisements and change the colors to black and white values. It’s all done easily by using cascading stylesheets. And the best thing is, visitors do not even have to know you created a new Stylesheet especially for the printer.

Stylesheets can also be created specifically for PDA’s and such. As you will understand, this adds some great flexibility to the presentation of your web document.

Conclusion

Cascading Style Sheets are created to make things easier. It gives you great control of your website and makes your visitors happy when they are surfing your website.

You are prepared for the future and will gain better search engine results automatically. Start using CSS to its full potential today! It will suit you well.

Web Design Delhi company e-fuzion keep the layout of the website as simple as possible without creating undue distractions in the form of ads that pop up every time the user is browsing on your website. It always tries to give the website a more customer friendly experience by designing a simple user interface. It is vital to communicate effectively with your customer; this can be made possible only with a good website design. Web Design Delhi Company always tries to use such designs which are more customer-friendly and avoid using technical terms as far as possible. Web Design Delhi company e-fuzion makes sure that the web sites are able to put across your ideas and suggestions along with the message in such a manner that it gets across to the customer. Thus, your website design must be able to create more acquaintance about your company and its products. Content is the king, eye catching visual images, self explanatory web pages. Web Design Delhi Company e-fuzion keep web site with good design, its design as simple as possible. It also provide good communication medium, these are the five popular principles of making a marvelous web site. Like products, websites have to be easy to use as well as attractive. So, once you have completed your web design, it’s vital to get real people to test it. Larger websites often do user testing with wire framing of their early web design jobs. A web design frame is a very simple prototype of a web page showing the basic layout without any of the colors or images that will end up showing the final web design picture. Testing how people use wire frames is an excellent way of identifying any usability problems in the web design early on rather than waiting until the website has been launched. Once you have sketched your ideas and decided which ones to try out, you are ready to open your web design program.

Web Design Delhi company e-fuzion is the web design programmer in which many web designers use to create the graphics for their websites. Basically, you draw your website with the help of a web design program like Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro before coding it with CSS, HTML or PHP and other computer languages.

5 Basic Rules of Web Design the most important rule in web design is that your web site should be easy to read. What does this mean? You should choose your text and background colours very carefully. You don’t want to use backgrounds that obscure your text or use colours that are hard to read. Dark-coloured text on a light-coloured background is easier to read than light-coloured text on a dark background.

You also don’t want to set your text size too small (hard to read) or too large (it will appear to shout at your visitors). All capitalised letters give the appearance of shouting at your visitors.

Keep the alignment of your main text to the left, not cantered. Centre-aligned text is best used in headlines. You want your visitors to be comfortable with what they are reading, and most text is left aligned.

Your web site should be easy to navigate

All of your hyperlinks should be clear to your visitors. Graphic images, such as buttons or tabs, should be clearly labelled and easy to read. Your web graphic designer should select the colours, backgrounds, textures, and special effects on your web graphics very carefully. It is more important that your navigational buttons and tabs be easy to read and understand than to have "flashy" effects. Link colours in your text should be familiar to your visitor (blue text usually indicates an unvisited link and purple or maroon text usually indicates a visited link), if possible. If you elect not to use the default colours, your text links should be emphasized in some other way (boldfaced, a larger font size, set between small vertical lines, or a combination of these). Text links should be unique – they should not look the same as any other text in your web pages. You do not want people clicking on your headings because they think the headings are links.

Your visitors should be able to find what they are looking for in your site within three clicks. If not, they are very likely to click off your site as quickly as they clicked on.

Your web site should be easy to find

How are your visitors finding you online? The myth, "If I build a web site, they will come," is still a commonly held belief among companies and organisations new to the Internet. People will not come to your web site unless you promote your site both online and offline.

Web sites are promoted online via search engines, directories, award sites, banner advertising, electronic magazines (e-zines) and links from other web sites. If you are not familiar with any of these online terms, then it is best that you have your site promoted by an online marketing professional.

Web sites are promoted offline via the conventional advertising methods: print ads, radio, television, brochures, word-of-mouth, etc. Once you have created a web site, all of your company’s printed materials including business cards, letterhead, envelopes, invoices, etc. should have your URL printed on them.

Not only should your web site be easy to find, but your contact information should be easy to find. People like to know that there is a person at the other end of a web site who can help them in the event that:

1. They need answers to questions which are not readily available on your web site;

2. Some element on your site is not working and end users need to be able to tell you about it, and

3. Directory editors need you to modify parts of your site to be sure that your site is placed in the most relevant category.

By giving all relevant contact information (physical address, telephone numbers, fax numbers,
and email address), you are also creating a sense of security for your end users. They can contact you in the way that makes them feel the most comfortable.

Your web page layout and design should be consistent throughout the site

Just as in any document formatted on a word processor or as in any brochure, newsletter, or newspaper formatted in a desktop publishing program, all graphic images and elements, typefaces, headings, and footers should remain consistent throughout your web site. Consistency and coherence in any document, whether it is a report or a set of web pages, project a professional image.

For example, if you use a drop shadow as a special effect in your bullet points, you should use drop shadows in all of your bullets. Link-colours should be consistent throughout your web pages. Typefaces and background colours, too, should remain the same throughout your site.

Colour-coded web pages, in particular, need this consistency. Typefaces, alignment in the main text and the headings, background effects, and the special effects on graphics should remain the same. Only the colours should change.

Your web site should be quick to download

Studies have indicated that visitors will quickly lose interest in your web site if the majority of a page does not download within 15 seconds. (Artists’ pages should have a warning at the top of their pages.) Even web sites that are marketed to high-end users need to consider download times. Sometimes, getting to web sites such as Microsoft or Sun Microsystems is so difficult and time consuming that visitors will often try to access the sites during non-working hours from their homes. If your business does not have good brand name recognition, it is best to keep your download time as short as possible.

A good application of this rule is adding animation to your site. Sure, animation looks "cool" and does initially catch your eye, but animation graphics tend to be large files. Test the download time of your pages first. If the download time of your page is relatively short and the addition of animation does not unreasonably increase the download time of your page, then and ONLY then should animation be a consideration.

Finally, before you consider the personal preferences of your web page design, you should consider all of the above rules FIRST and adapt your personal preferences accordingly. The attitude "I don’t like how it looks" should always be secondary to your web site’s function. Which is more important: creative expression/corporate image or running a successful business?

If you have a business, big or small you may be thinking of getting yourself a website.

The world wide web is another way of spreading your message or selling your product.

First you need to find somebody or a company to build and design your website. Some web designers charge a huge amount of money so it is quite difficult to make the right choice. Due to the high number of people offering these web design services, you should be able to get a cheap and affordable deal.

One area you could try first is online auction websites such as ebay. There may well be a new company who is just starting out and who are looking at building up a portfolio. They may well at this early stage be offering their services quite cheaply. This method also applys to web promotion and optimisation/optimization.

Alternativerly I advise people to look into the yellow pages, look on the internet or ask family and friends if they know of anybody.

You are normally able to find somebody who will do a very good job and will design you a professional looking website at an affordable price.

Always look at the portfolio page and have a look at the websites they have already built. It might be worth seeing what the page rank of these websites are like and you are also looking to see if you like the style.

Once the web designer has built your website ask them if they would add a link from their homepage to your new website. Also ask them if they would submit the site to all of the search engines.

In present day customer wants some dynamic websites which create a great demand in the online market. Which are more users friendly and also enable smoother and more efficient? Now the Web Design Delhi e-fuzion offers dissimilar dynamic website is being designed, there are a few points which should always be kept in brains. These features are part of the designing stage but should preferably be Web Design Delhi company e-fuzion itself. Let’s start with the Meta marks and their images. The title label and the Meta label participate a very significant role in the ranking of the active websites. Therefore, each page in a lively website should have title tags and Meta tags interleave so that they can with no trouble catch the eyes of the search engines. Along with these, there should also be the capability to add some more additional Meta images if necessary. The title tags and Meta keywords are frequently limited to a certain number of characters only. The Web Design Delhi company e-fuzion should thus make sure that a character restraint is stated in the text boxes so that it does not surpass the assigned information. The direction sheet in the Web Design Delhi company e-fuzion too necessitates extra concentration. The admin panel of the energetic sites should have a link organization attribute down with busted links manager and mutual link checkers in the same sheet. These features are enormously useful in continue and the appropriate implementation of the vibrant websites. In all, the energetic websites in reality help content steering through imagery or wording as the case capacity entail. This contact is implicated in two unusual behavior what the Web Design Delhi company e-fuzion is still on. They are the client-side scripting and the attendant side scripting. The buyer side scripting includes the changing of boundary procedure within the web pages. And the head waiter side scripting really includes the transform that are approved out in the complete page foundation.

The best part of lively website designing is that they facilitate a lot of communication among the websites and the user, satisfied with management, preset routing services and it also uses a number of complicated tools, which make website study easier and effectual. A good web site provide you a good a feedback if any web site owner want to get all the facilities then he just need to follow the web design Delhi e-fuzion.

Web Design Delhi Website designing is defined as the arrangement and the creativity of the web pages. A web designing page is consists of the images and the text and we can say that the web page has the information or the data part. The original web page designers in the early 1990s.every page of the website are the HTML page and have its own address. In Macromedia Flash there a proprietary, full-bodied graphics animation and the application development program which are used to create and deliver dynamic content like as the sound and video and interactive applications over the web via the browser. Web Design Delhi gives lots of format for develop the website. Lots of graphic artists use Flash presentation because it gives them exact control over every part of the design, and anything can be animated and generally. Some application designers enjoy flash because it lets them create web based applications that don’t have to be refreshed or go to a new web page every time an action occurs. Flash detractors maintain that Flash websites tend to be poorly designed, and often use confusing and non-standard user-interfaces. It is possible to specify alternate content to be displayed for browsers that do not support Flash. Using alternate content also helps search engines to understand the page, and can result in much better visibility for the page. The designers who are used to table-based layouts, they developed Web sites in CSS f replicating what can be done with tables, leading some to find CSS design rather awkward. For example, it is rather difficult to produce certain design elements, such as vertical positioning, and full-length footers in a design using absolute positions. There is separate various things which indicate in this site one can find the different variety of the web designing and more things like as the detail of the different fields means this site is related to the various aspects like as the job portal, website designing, cd multimedia presentation, outsourcing development Delhi. Web Design Delhi always gives new look to different web sites.

Let me ask you this question. How many times have you made changes to the page structure of your site? Ten times? 100 times? 1000 times? If you have a large site, the number of changes can grow rapidly. This is especially true if you deal with dynamic sites that are driven by a complex scripting language and a database.

Now let me ask you one more question. How many times have you "fat fingered" the keyboard when typing code? I cannot speak for anyone else, but I do it all the time. Now, what happens when you are coding hundreds or thousands of lines of code? Are you going to catch that one little mistake, or are your clients going to catch it?

So, what happens when a link is no longer active on your site, or when you "fat finger" while typing your code and a link cannot be found? Error pages are generated. The most common of these is the 404 error. This error is generated by your web server software to let the end user know that it cannot find the file specified. The big issue here is that this page does not include a link back to your site. And unless you are the server administrator, it may not include your email address, in which case the end user cannot notify you of the dead link.

There is a new trend among hosting providers to capitalize on your dead links. That’s right. They are making money from pages that don’t exist on your site! You might think this concept is silly, but I assure you, there is big money in error pages. Just think about how many times a day end-users might "fat finger" typing in URLs. Let’s just say it happens 1,000 times per day (and I’m probably being conservative here). Now multiply that by an average of $0.10 per click for the credit the host receives when the end-user starts browsing their "convenience page". If you are quick at math, you figured out that that equals $100 per day! Now, if you take into consideration the size of the Internet and start scaling this figure accordingly, you can easily see where this is a seven-figure industry.

What can you do about this? How can you stop your web host from profiting from your visitors without your permission? How can you start getting a piece of this very lucrative pie? The answer is really quite simple.

Most web hosting providers will allow you to customize at least a minimal subset of the configuration parameters of the web server for your hosting account. I’m going to show you exactly how to do this for Apache, the most common web server application on the Internet. Similar steps can be taken for IIS or any other web server application, but I trust that you can use Google™ to find those specific commands.

Ok, the first thing you want to do is come up with a template for your error pages. I suggest you use the basic layout of your site so you can maintain a sense of consistency.

Next, you will need to decide what content to display on the page. You should let your visitors know that they have stumbled across a dead link, but you also want to provide a streamlined method for them to find their way back to your site. I recommend using the appropriate error message in the page title and at the beginning of the page using h1 tags. You should append a description of the error message to your page title and display this description using h2 tags in your page.

Example:

<html>
<head>
<title>Error 404: The page
you are looking for was not found</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Error 404</h1>
</h2>The page you are looking for was not found. Please check the URL and try again.</h2>
</body>
</html>

Now you need to provide a easy "one-click" path to your website. This can be accomplished using a simple text link in the page footer.

Example:

<html>
<head>
<title>Error 404: The page you are looking for was not found</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Error 404</h1>
</h2>The page you are looking for was not found. Please check the URL and try again.</h2>
To return to the [Company Name] homepage, click <a href="http://yourdomain.com">here</a>.
</body>
</html>

Now, upload your template as error404.html to your website’s root directory (usually public_html).

To get the above template to function correctly when a user comes across an invalid link, all you need to do is create a .htaccess file, using your favorite plain text editor, with the following line in it and place it in the root directory (usually public_html) of your website.

ErrorDocument 404 http://yourdomain.com/error404.html

For each error type you wish to provide a custom page for, simply repeat the above steps, adjusting the file name and ErrorDocument statement appropriately. To gather a complete list of server response codes, search Google™ for "Apache error codes". (Adjust as needed for your server software.)

As you can see, this process is extremely simple and only takes about five minutes. If you are good with HTML and you have a Google AdSense™ account and other affiliate accounts, you can easily customize your template to include your AdSense™ search box and your affiliate links. If you are really savvy, you can use a free script like CaRP (RSS to HTML converter) to provide relevant content on your error pages and further enhance the likelihood of driving the end-user to your site.

Of course, if you are not that good with HTML but still want to retain your customers, there is hope. I’ve created a very clean template that does all of the above for you. All you have to do is update a few variables in the code and you are ready to go. Simply go to my site and search for MyErrorPages. It’s a free script that you are welcome to use on as many sites as you like.

Now that you see how easy it is to customize your error pages and retain your valuable visitors, what are you doing here still? Customize those error pages!