Track Down & Fix Broken Links
The transient nature of the Web makes the problem of broken links a day to day
occurrence. Sites that have been around for years suddenly disappear into the virtual
sunset, and other sites can be even more insubstantial.
You need to get on top of the situation, and sort out any broken links on your site
before they become too unmanageable. Luckily, there are a large number of tools and services to help you in this task.
If you prefer to work directly off the Web, and your site has 25 links or less, head
over to the WebSite Garage, where you can
enter your site's URL and get a free check of your links. This check is very, very FAST.
Continuing the greasy overall theme, NetMechanic
has a free link checker that can
handle hundreds of links, though it is much slower than the other online checker mentioned
above. I suggest that you always choose to run jobs in background mode, and submit your
email address to receive the results. That way, you don't have to stay online for hours
watching your links getting checked one by one.
If you prefer to use software to check your links, I recommend the excellent InfoLink Link Checker Program. It comes in two
flavours: Freeware and "real". The Freeware version
will be enough for many sites; the paid version will let you run the program a very
generous _50_ times before it shuts down. Either way, there's no excuse any more for
broken links.
Handy Hint : Tracking Down Broken
Graphic Links!
Now here's a strange situation: your site looks perfect on your computer... but some of
your graphics won't load for anyone else! Are your graphics playing favourites?
In a sense, yes! What is most likely happening is that your page contains links to the
graphics ON YOUR HARD DISK. So naturally the page looks great on your computer!
There's an incredibly simply way to check for this problem, yet many people never go to
the bother. Don't be apathetic like them... instead, just look at your site from ANY other
computer. Doesn't matter which one, any computer other than the one your site was designed
on will do.
If you don't see any broken graphics on your machine, but you do when you recheck your
site on a different one then BINGO! you must be trying to load your
graphics from your hard disk... |
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