Adult Site Owners

So you've spent hundreds of hours building TGPs, AVS sites, freesites, and submitted your site to every Search Engine on the Planet. So why did that visitor just leave your site without even looking at the front page? Don't let all your marketing efforts go to waste! Read on to find out how to turn the most common web error into a marketing opportunity that can increase your paysite and AVS site sign-ups and sponsor exposure/click-thrus.

THE PROBLEM
"Not found
The requested URL /file.html was not found on this server.
Apache/1.3.14 Server at www.yourdomain.com Port 80"

Have you ever seen a message like this? If you ever tried to get to a page, image or file that didn't exist on a server, you probably have. If you typed in the URL to get to the page, you might have double-checked the address line for mistakes; but odds are you followed a bad link, and decided it wasn't worth the extra effort. For a surfer, the 404 Error is annoying; for the Webmaster, it's lost money if you don't use it to keep your visitor's attention! In this article we talk about how to capitalize on the 404 Error.

To start, there is only one way to get a 404 Error - try to access a file that doesn't exist on a server, however, there are several reasons why someone might end up doing this:

They followed an outdated link to your website. If you have more than one page from your website listed on a search engine (especially spiders), your visitor may have clicked on a link that you've changed since you got listed. They purposely changed the address line and tried to view a file that doesn't exist. This is especially common with thumbnail galleries where the visitor, hungry to grab your content, tries to guess a pattern to your image or directory filenames. They followed a bad link inside your website. This should never happen (yeah, right!), but if you made a typo on one of your links inside your pay or AVS site, or recently changed a filename and didn't update the link, your visitor will get a 404 Error.

THE BAD SEARCH ENGINE LINK
In the first situation, you have a potential paying customer who tried to get to your site and ended up with a blank page. For this type of visitor 404 Error, on a paysite or AVS site (non-freehosted - we talk about that later), you can simply re-direct their 404 Error to your main index page. Most visitors won't even notice that there was a 404 Error if you do this right. To set this up, you modify (or create) a text file called .htaccess in your root directory that contains the following line:

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.mydomain.com/index.html

Replace http://www.mydomain.com/index.html with the URL to YOUR main site entrance page. Anyone trying to get to your pay or AVS site via an outdated link will end up on your main page, as if there were no problem. Instead of automatically losing a visitor, you've brought them one step closer to closing the sale.

THE CONTENT THIEF
In scenario #2, you have unscrupulous visitors trying to steal your unpublished content; so you can feel a little better about treating them just a little harsher. These are usually people trying to steal your TGP pictures or movies that haven't been submitted to the TGP galleries yet. For this type of visitor, create a 404 page on your TGP site that displays a bunch of your sponsor banners, banners to your pay or other sites, and any other links you can think to throw in the mix. Also, feel free to throw enter and exit consoles, circle jerks, or whatever your heart desires on this one. Worst case scenario: the content thief will give up and quit trying to steal your content. Best case: he'll decide that stealing content from you is too much work, and go buy from one of your sponsor sites. To set this up, insert a line in your .htaccess file like this:

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.mytgpdomain.com/404.html

Be sure to replace http://www.mytgpdomain.com/404.html with the URL to your custom 404 Error page. If you don't have an .htaccess file on your TGP gallery yet, create a new one in the root directory.

RESPECT THE PAYING CUSTOMER
You want to treat our final class of visitor with the utmost respect: after all, he/she is a PAYING customer. In this type of situation, you want a custom 404 Error page in your members' area that may contain a couple links to sponsors, but should also contain a link back to the main members' area and a form to contact you via e-mail. If contacted about an error, fix it as quickly as possible! If your customers are hitting bad links inside your paysite, instead of pulling up content, they are going to get pissed. Some paysites also pop up a small console when the members' area 404 page is hit – just be careful not to screw your paying customers around with too many pop-ups, circle jerks or other crap that will piss them off.

You undoubtedly have an .htaccess file already for your members' area; be sure not to screw up the Auth* lines when you edit this file, or you'll mess up customer access to your site! Add the following line to your .htaccess file in your members' section directory:

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.mypaysite.com/members/404.html

Replace http://www.mypaysite.com/members/404.html with your members' area custom 404 page.

.htaccess AND FREEHOSTS
Most freehosts do not allow you to add or modify your .htaccess file. They make money by popping up their own sponsor banners and enter/exit consoles on 404 Errors on their servers. If you would like to modify or create your own .htaccess file on a freehost, ask them first to see if they allow it. If you do it without their permission, odds are your site will get pulled as soon as they discover it.

ABOUT .htaccess
What is all this ".htaccess" stuff? .htaccess is a text file that allows you to set access and other parameters for the Apache web server. .htaccess is not compatible with other web servers, like Microsoft IIS. Among other things, the .htaccess file lets you create custom error pages for all web server errors, password protect directories and restrict access to your server in other ways.

.htaccess is 'directory-specific', meaning you can have a different .htaccess file in every directory on your web server. The .htaccess file settings apply to the directory it's located in and all of it's sub-directories by default, unless the sub-directory contains its own .htaccess file.

Before editing any of your .htaccess files, ALWAYS make a backup!

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FastForward is an application developer/programmer from Philadelphia, PA. He designs back-end systems and admin tools for a variety of corporations, including some of the biggest names in banking, health care and manufacturing.
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