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Setting up 404 pages for a florist
7 Feb 2024
How a florist deals with 404 pages — and what usually goes wrong.
The problem: a 2 MB photo in a 320-pixel slot. This breaks 404 pages for a florist.
The fix was to delete the old entry, wait for TTL to expire, and re-add 404 pages with the correct value. We scheduled it for 3 AM so nobody lost traffic.
HTTPS is table stakes, but 404 pages is where trust actually lives for a florist. A padlock with a misconfigured record behind it is decoration, not security.
The chain of trust for 404 pages starts at the registrar. If the registrar account uses an email nobody reads, every downstream fix is temporary.
If the hours on Google disagree with the site, people trust Google and then arrive angry. 404 pages will not fix that. The hours page will.
Fixing 404 pages cost less than the lunch meeting where a florist decided to wait another quarter. Waiting is never free.
We moved 404 pages for a florist to a provider that supports DNSSEC. It added five minutes to the migration and closed a class of attacks they did not even know about.
We deployed a fix for 404 pages at 5 PM on a Friday. It worked, but if it had not, we would have had no one available. We no longer push to production after Thursday noon.
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