I was checking out some of my favorite blogs and I saw that the Blogging experiment recently wrote an article about upgrading the latest release of WordPress 2.3.2. This new security update fixes some known issues within WordPress that can exploit draft posts and allow for malicious behavior.

I did the upgrade without thinking or reading too much into it. WordPress has not sent out a bad update in all of the time I’ve been using their platform so I just go through the clicks and get everything up to date.

One part of the Blogging Experiments post caught my eye.

“Place your custom template at wp-content/db-error.php. If WP has a problem connecting to your database, this page will displayed rather than the default error message.”

This got me thinking about a topic I read about about a year ago regarding blog 404 pages.

Monetize your 404 page

Having the ability to customize your 404 page is a big deal if you are diligent about making money online. For one reason or another people will encounter a 404 error on your site. People that are web savvy sometime try to bypass registered sections of websites to access download pages or maybe they just mistype something. When the 404 page is the first one seen by a new visitor studies have shown they leave your site for another thinking that your website may be down for one reason or another. But for the die hard SEO and blogger that wants to make money online, setting up a quick 404 error page with links and some advertising could earn you some extra money online. I did a bit of research and came up with a few other sources that can explain this tip well. I wouldn’t go out and spend the money on this book. There are enough free sources available to make money online with the 404 error page.

Profitimo has a good outline for this.

Doityrself explains how to make custom 404 error pages profitable

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