Link Maintenance

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Even when links are used correctly within a site, they eventually require maintenance as pages are moved around. Commonly, links to external sites will break as other sites move their pages without considering outside linkage. Ferreting out the broken links within a site can be tedious , but doing so should be a top priority. A broken link should be considered a serious problem. Users clicking on a broken link are on the road to nowhere, eventually to receive the now infamous "404 Not Found" message or something similar. Imagine if a menu on a software application triggered a message saying "Sorry, spell check not found." Such oversights would not be tolerated within software and should be considered the same level of problem within a site.

Fortunately, identifying and fixing broken links isn't terribly difficult. Armed with a tool such as Coast WebMaster (www. coast .com), finding broken links is a simpler matter. However, consider that if you have external links within a site, even constant monitoring isn't going to keep broken links out of the site at all times. To account for the unforeseen broken link, consider installing a custom 404 page. Then, put information such as a link to a site map or a method to contact the site's administrator in the custom error page. An example custom 404 page is shown in Figure 17-3.

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Figure 17-3: Custom 404 pages can fit with a site design.
Note  

Installation of a custom 404 error page depends on the server being utilized.

One interesting possibility is to try to address broken links before they happen. For example, if you expect that people may make typos with your domain name or site URLs, create contingency URLs in advance. You can even install a spell-checking system on your server to catch URL typos. For Apache, this is called mod_speling and for IIS, it is called URLSpellcheck (www.urlspellcheck.com).

Redirection Pages

Rather than showing 404 errors, many sites prefer to redirect users to new pages. If the content at a URL such as http://www.democompany.com/robots.html has moved to a new location, it is best to install a page that points people to the new page or even quickly redirects them there. Some site maintainers prefer to send people directly to the new page, whereas others will install a temporary page informing visitors of the page change, like the one shown in Figure 17-4.

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Figure 17-4: 'Page Moved' example page

Sending people directly to the new page might be seamless, but it does take some control away from the user. For example, if the user requests a particular page on, say, robotic dogs, and a redirect takes them to a different page, they will become very frustrated. Always make sure that the new page is related to the moved page.

Maintaining site links can be a great deal of work. Custom error pages and redirection pages can help, but Web managers will have to be ever vigilant in link monitoring. Good Web sites should make sure to watch log files for referring sites. Furthermore, consider visiting a search engine and doing a reverse search. Specifically, search for sites that link to yours and make sure they are up-to-date on any significant site changes made. Making sure that other sites link to you correctly might be a great deal of work, but it is all part of being a good Web citizen. The next section presents a brief overview of common site content management issues.



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HTML & XHTML
HTML & XHTML: The Complete Reference (Osborne Complete Reference Series)
ISBN: 007222942X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 252
Authors: Thomas Powell

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