What a missing page shows you

An address that does not exist on ipe.rest gets one small file. It says so plainly, offers a way home, and asks search engines not to list it.

Nobody plans to see this page, which is why it is worth a look. The figures are from 12 November 2026, taken from the file itself and from the deploy tests.

One file

The page is 404.html, 4,355 bytes, in the root of the site. GitHub Pages shows it for any address that has no page. Its styles are written inside it, and it has no script, no image, no external link and no font file to download. The text uses the fonts already on your device.

Plain words

The heading says Page not found. Under it, one sentence says the page may have moved or the address may be mistyped. Two links follow: the ipe() home page and the journal. Neither tries to guess what you meant.

Twelve languages

Below that is a list with one line for each of our 12 languages. Each says page not found in that language and links to that language’s home page and journal, so a visitor does not have to read English to leave. The page itself is in English, and the lines are marked with their own language codes.

Not for search

The page is marked noindex, follow: do not list it, but follow its links. It carries no canonical and no hreflang tag. An error page that claimed a proper address would only confuse a search engine.

Light and dark

The colours switch with the device’s dark-mode setting, and the two main links show a focus outline for keyboard use. The heading scales with the screen width, and the buttons wrap onto a second line on narrow ones.

How we check it

A deploy test reads the file and checks that it is marked noindex, follow, has no canonical or hreflang tag, and links to the home page, the English journal and the root. Whether it looks right on a small phone we check by eye, as with other pages.

ipe(); // not here, but home is

A visitor on a missing page has already hit a small snag. The page should help and then stay out of the way.