Another tip for the newbie’s regarding 404 and Wildcard Pages…….

[Dnforumadmin]

Not a major deal, but if left ignored it will decrease potential traffic and revenue.

I frequently check our customers’ domains, the ones that Dnforum.com has done PPC templates for or even web designs that we have done for members, and I usually come across the same issue with at least 40% of the sites checked:

404 pages are not working and/or
Wildcards are not working.

Before knowing this ourselves, our revenue on our domains was fairly great, but since we got our 404 pages and Wildcards working our revenue increased by at least 30%.
30% is a big number when you’re speaking about income, and even if that 30% adds up to an extra $2, why lose that income?

You all know that when purchasing a domain, it may have previous links, a forum even a games section etc... So when you pick this domain up and turn it into a parked page, or a PPC Site or anything else, people may have already bookmarked certain pages, or certain pages may still be listed on other sites, such as: yourdomainname.com/dating
Now when someone tries access this page from links through other sites, or someone may have bookmarked this page from previously, and your 404 page is not set up correctly your visitor will see:

'404 Page Not Found Errors'. And now you have permanently lost this visitor and possible revenue.

The same example follows through with the wildcards. An example of a wildcard is forum.yourdomainname.com or games.yourdomainname.com, if these are not set up correctly, then your visitors will come across this:

Page cannot be displayed
Now again, same as above, you have permanently lost this visitor and possible revenue.

Here is an example of how our domains are set up with 404 and Wildcards

404-
http://www.penpals.com/whatever

Wildcard-
http://whatever.penpals.com

If you’ve checked both examples you will find that both 404 and Wildcards are set up to redirect back to the index page http://www.penpals.com
This way, if there was ever a forum.penpals.com or penpals.com/dating we will not lose the visitor to a “Page cannot be displayed” or “Page cannot be displayed” and most likely gain revenue.

Like I mentioned before, even if it increases your revenue by $2, isn’t $2 better then $0?

Hope this helps some a bit……

If you have any further questions please feel free to post them and I will answer as much as I can, and I’m sure so will other, more experienced forum members.

[JEsports]

Is there a command line you can add to the .htaccess file for wildcard traffic .. kind of like this one i use for 404?:

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.yourdomain.com

[Dnforumadmin]

Hey JE,

are you on Windows or Linux?

Is there a command line you can add to the .htaccess file for wildcard traffic .. kind of like this one i use for 404?:

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.yourdomain.com