How do we create a page similar to Twitter's Fail Whale?

[narutodude000]

When my site is down, how I display an error page rather than a white screen? Do I need backup servers or something?

[ericatekka]

Are we talking about a 404 or 505 here?

[ericatekka]

here is what I think your talking about.

http://www.elated.com/articles/makin...om-error-page/

[narutodude000]

When Twitter's resources are running low due to high traffic, the fail whale is displayed.

[ericatekka]

Sounds like a 500 page.

I guess you could make a page that runs a job on the server to output to some language that the load is high. Would therefore add more load which makes me believe its a 500 page.