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Website Links Manager
3:02 PM EDT 6/20/04
Does anyone have experience managing a library website area that links to outside web pages? We have a huge section of links to valuable sites for our patrons organized by subject, but it's getting large and cumbersome to update and manage. For example, finding a broken link requires clicking on each link every few months. Adding a new suggested link involves scanning a subject area to ensure the proposed link is not a duplicate. This is not fun. Are there any software tools available to manage this?
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RE: Website Links Manager
3:02 PM EDT 6/20/04
as a reply to Alana Boyajian.
What software are you using now? Both Dreamweaver and Frontpage will scan for broken links on your entire site.
And searching is probably easier than scanning for duplicates.
I would think the ideal situation for managing the links would be to have the links in a database, and have the page query the database by topic to dynamically build the list on a particular page.
Hopefully someone else has more details about a good way to do this.
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RE: RE: Website Links Manager
3:02 PM EDT 6/20/04
as a reply to Alana Boyajian.
Our IT team codes everything by hand. I know there are a few free spider software downloads available; however, our library is behind a firewall which seems to pose a problem.
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Re: Website Links Manager
4:16 PM EDT 9/3/04
as a reply to Alana Boyajian.
Hi,
I manage my libraries website and I have not found a quick way to check external links. But I have been offered (spam wise) services that will crawl through your site and generate a report of all broken links. Unfortunately I don't remember the name of the service. So I guess ultimately I was no help at all was I?
Wildcatbeer
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Re: Website Links Manager
5:25 PM EST 3/23/06
as a reply to Ryan Beerlover.
Hello,
I know this post is kind of ben around for a while, but just in case someone is searching for help or suggestions on managing broken links finds this, I have a goo one for you. A very useful tool for checking for broken links I use is called "XENU Link Sleuth."
Its a Free Download at:
http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html
Xenu gives you a report of every link on your entire Web Site. Weather the links are broken or not. It displays what link it is, what page it's on or if the link was redirected to a new link, or a temporary page or if it simply doesn't exists anymore.
It's cool I like it. Saves me a lot of time. So if you need link report, try Xenu.
Frankie Matos
Sr. Library Assistant
Camden Free Public Library
Camden, NJ
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Re: Website Links Manager
10:56 PM EST 3/23/06
as a reply to Frankie Matos.
Frankie, thanks for this information. This does look like an interesting solution to that nagging problem of broken links. I hope to give it a try soon. And best of all, it's free --I like that!
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Re: Website Links Manager
4:46 PM EDT 4/7/06
as a reply to Alana Boyajian.
This is timely, because (as I mentioned elsewhere) I'm working on a website redesign and we're toying with the idea of dynamic page generation. I want to set it up so librarians can easily update collections of website links within their subject areas, though I haven't figured out how to do that yet.
Anyway, checking for broken links periodically would obviously be important--akin to weeding old or outdated print material, really. Do you happen to know if this tool can cope with dynamically generated lists of links from a database? That may be a route we'll want to pursue.
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Re: Website Links Manager
6:47 PM EDT 4/7/06
as a reply to Alana Boyajian.
I found that Xenu didn't recognize many links which were actually active. A quick check against both NYtimes.com as well as a couple of my small personal sites turned up many false dead links including links to complex URL's such as those produced by a database driven site (many blogs, wikis, and pretty much any large site) as well as failure to recognize links to directories where the intention for the user to be directed to an index page (e.g. http://www.nytimes.com/pages/nyregion/ as a link).
That said, it is a simple and fast tool that would be good for those with small webpages that are built entirely on static HTML code.
However if you are looking for something more powerful (and don't want to pay for Dreamweaver) I would reccomend a search for "Spider" on sourceforge.net (the leading open source project repository) to find some free solutions. Look for active projects with a lot of downloads in order to find the most polished tools.
- Okay, I actually went out and tried to find a better link checker for free, and so far have come up empty. Since this software (Xenu) is so easy to use I would reccomend using it, but just be aware of the potential for false positives.
Message was edited by:
brendanlevy
Message was edited by:
brendanlevy
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Re: Website Links Manager
12:04 PM EDT 4/27/06
as a reply to Genevieve Williams.
Regarding cooperative web authoring software I recommend you look into Contribute. It's a product of Macromedia (recently swallowed by Adobe). We use mostly Studio 8 (including Dreamweaver and other Macromedia goodies) to create, maintain and manage our web site. Contribute has proven to be a fairly decent way to empower librarians to upload directly to the site.
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Re: Website Links Manager
5:54 PM EDT 5/22/06
as a reply to Ryan Beerlover.
Passing along some info that just showed up on the Web4Lib list --someone from UC Berkeley posted this:
"I have used [url http://www.linklint.org/ ]LinkLint[/url] here at the UC Berkeley Library in projects, and I was generally pleased. It produces clear reports and can do large websites easily. That said, I see it hasn't been updated, and I believe it is still working with HTTP 1.0. That means that it will misinterpret some of the HTTP return codes. If the author has updated it, or can be persuaded to, it would be great."
Anyone else used this?
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Re: Website Links Manager
6:01 PM EDT 5/22/06
as a reply to Ed Maurer.
Welcome 'balois'! Sorry I missed your post until now.
I've always been happy with Macromedia products and am now wondering what the Adobe "swallowing" will really mean. I like the concept of involving and "empowering" the library staff. It looks like [url http://www.adobe.com/products/contribute/ ]Contribute[/url] costs $80 currently, with a 30-day free download offer. I'm not clear in my quick perusal if this product only works in conjunction with DreamWeaver or if it is a standalone product.
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