It is always better to put some informational message than leaving it to web-server for displaying the error when some page isn’t available over the website or when the whole website is down for maintenance. Here is how Matt Read’s blog looks like when it is down (those knowing about WordPress will be familiar with this name) –
Last night, this is how Google’s Orkut error pages looked like when it was down –
30 sec is the max time you are supposed to wait but after 2 minutes, I started getting this page –
