W3C link checker

[francis]

You'd think that this would really hammer their bandwidth, but if they want to offer the service, then thanks!

The W3C have added a link checker (http://validator.w3.org/checklink) to their HTML validator. You can run your (or CadTutor (http://validator.w3.org/checklink?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cadtutor.net&hide_type=all&depth=&check=Check)!) through it and check your links. I tried running the AOL homepage through it and it went mental - I'm not sure where it was fulling all the links from, it almost looked as though it was following them through the entire site where it could.

On a different note, it's interesting to note that they call this their Link Checker, yet the URL is ...checklink. Surely ...linkcheck would be easier to remember?

[David]

Originally posted by francis@Mar 2 2004, 10:40 pm
...You can run your (or CadTutor (http://validator.w3.org/checklink?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cadtutor.net&hide_type=all&depth=&check=Check)!) through it and check your links.
Yikes! two broken links. Sites come and sites go. It's interesting to note that the web is a much more stable place than it was 5 years ago. At that time you could rarely depend upon a link remaining good for more than a month. Still, the value of a link checker cannot be disputed. FrontPage has an excellent facility but it didn't find the two broken links. Of course, you can use the link checker in Dreamweaver. I just checked the CADTutor home page and it didn't report the two broken links found by W3C! The links are definately broken and now I'm wondering how reliable the DW link checker really is.

It's possible that both FP and DW don't report external links as broken if the return is an internal server error (as in this case) rather than a simple 404. Hmm...

[francis]

Do you have any idea how to stop DW reporting fragments as broken links? Our intranet has hundreds of the things, and pulling off a broken links report always lists fragments as broken when they aren't.