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Now that you have built your
website and you have taken care to add good links, it might be a good time
to consider what can go wrong. Links can break when files and folders are
moved or renamed. Links to other web sites are also particularly fragile,
and can break at any time without warning. Trouble is you won't know
anything is wrong until you click the link and get a "page not found" error
message.
Broken links are common. Sadly you
can upload a perfectly working website today, and within months, weeks, or
even days you will find that many external links have died off. Either they
point to websites that no longer exist, have moved or been rearranged.
Commonly known as "Link Rot".
The trouble with link rot is that
it violates the confidence of your visitor. They arrive at your page that
promises to provide them with the resources to satisfy their visit, only to
stumble across dead end links and disappointment. Needless to say, they will
not stay long.
So
what can we do?
Firstly, rigorously test your
internal links, checking for minor errors and correcting. Travel each
path at least once.
Secondly, check your external links
and again travel each path, correcting any errors as they are found.
Next, we can use the site
management tools (included with many html editors). With these we can get a
birds eye view of everything contained in the website, and at a glance get
an overall picture of where our links lead and identify any that are broken.
Additionally, we can use a link
checker. This an automated tool that scans through one or more of your web
pages. It tests each link it finds by trying to retrieve the target page.
Depending on the of tool and type validation you are performing, the link
checker may only scan for internal links, or it may scan every page until
its covered the whole web site. Sophisticated link checkers are built in to
FrontPage and Dreamweaver, and are great for digging through your website
identifying problems.
Great. So is that it?
Not quite. The link checker that is
built into your html editor, works on the copy of the web site that is
stored on your computer. That's great for keeping track of your links during
development. But it is not much help once your site is published into
the wild. For example it wont identify mistakes where a link is pointing to
a local file on your hard drive, or if you forget to upload a file to your
server.
Is
there a solution?
Yes. For the final word on your
website links you might want to try a free online link checker. The World
Wide Web Consortium W3C provides an excellent easy to use Free Validator
Tool available at http://validator.w3.org/checklink
To start your free online link check,
follow these steps.
1: Surf to
http://validator.w3.org/checklink
This will take you to the W3C
Link Checker Utility.
2: Enter the full URL for the page you
want to check in the text box.
3: Choose the options that you want to
apply.
4: Click check to start checking
links.
The link checker will now create a
report which will update as each link is checked. When the validation is
complete, a results section will appear at the bottom of the link check
report. This report will advise you of broken invalid links and where
applicable, any redirects that occurred. This report will also make
suggestions for suitable remedies where required..
When you have made any necessary
corrections, if you go to the top of the page, you will see an html link.
Click here, it will take you to an html results page for your website. This
will reveal any errors identified in your coding. Some of these errors will
clearly be an obvious coding error. For those errors that are not so clear,
unless you are an experienced programmer it is recommended that you leave
well alone.
All very simple really. To keep your
website functioning in top condition, we suggest running a Link Checker at
least once a month.
Good Luck
YourDomainUK Team  |
