Link Checker

[Neil Jacobs]

Colleagues,

We've used Webwatch (http://www.specter.com/ww.1.x/products.html) 
to help maintain the Pier local University of Sussex gateway (3100 links at present - 
found at http://www.susx.ac.uk/library/pier/). As noted in an earlier message, 
Webwatch is well reviewed in the Ariadne newsletter 
(http://ukoln.bath.ac.uk/ariadne/issue3/autotrack/). It does seem to identify 'document 
moved' messages, although I think that the information has to be in the header of the 
page concerned for Webwatch to pick it up.

The main problem with it (apart from it being limited to Windows) is that, as far as I 
can work out, it requires a single HTML file to check. Hence we have to concatenate the 
entire gateway into one file (using a DOS batch file) before setting Webwatch off on it's 
overnight run. This also means that the output is a huge single file, which can be rather 
unfriendly to check through. 

                           Neil Jacobs                           
Assistant Librarian (Internet) at the University of Sussex Library
email:  N.A.Jacobs at sussex.ac.uk  Telephone:  01273 606755 ext 3466



On Wed, 11 Sep 1996 04:17:04 -0700 Jerry Kuntz wrote:

> From: Jerry Kuntz <jkuntz at mhv.net>
> Date: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 04:17:04 -0700
> Subject: Re: Link Checker
> To: Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at library.berkeley.edu>
> 
> Are any of the link checker (or site maintenance) tools--other than 
> "Underpaid Clerical Worker"--intelligent enough to detect links that 
> connect to PAGE HAS MOVED or UPDATE YOUR BOOKMARK messages? If not, 
> should they really be used?
> 
> 			Jerry Kuntz
> 			Electronic Resources Consultant
> 			Ramapo Catskill Library System
> 			jkuntz at mhv.net