Website integrity and issue reporting

So I’m a PureVPN user, for now - and I realised I’m really not because anytime I need something that serve me better… I need to use another NordVPN. I’m not paid to mention any of these.

I’d be happy to digress, but the last straw, the reason for the title, is that it is not acceptable to have a website broken on the very basic navigation items. It’s never been acceptable, but I think particularly in 2025, the year I’m writing this.

If you have a VPN membership, very sorry you paid for this, login, head to help desk



Click on “Ideas” - beautiful box innit?



And you’ll be greeted by this:



So first of all I didn’t mean anything, dear PureVPN, and it’s upsetting to assume it’s my mistake. Especially when there are so many ways you could identify, isolate and control the error (when it’s on your side).

Let’s say you are using one of the simplest framework to do this like eleventy (but you don’t need to), just create page like this:

---
title: Oops! Not Found
permalink: 404.html
---
ciao

<div id="status"></div>

<script>
const ref = document.referrer;
const status = document.getElementById("status");

if (ref && ref.startsWith(location.origin)) {
  status.textContent = "Looks like something on my site linked to a missing page… mi dispiace.";
} else {
  status.textContent = "Maybe the address was typed wrong? Happens to everyone, bello.";
}
</script>

And it’s done. If the user mistyped it, they will be told so. If it’s likely coming from your website, they will be told it’s not their fault (and perhaps you could trigger some analytics, to make sure you are proactive on this).

That’s it, PureVPN - and if you can’t cover the basics like your own “Ideas” section or a proper 404 error page, I’m afraid I wasted my money.