The Blog of Adam Patten

Broken links are a sure way to annoy your users and drive them away from your site. Links to external sites can change without your knowledge, but it is a sin to have broken links within your own site. When working on a site you need to be diligent and ensure that broken links do not make any unexpected cameos. I used to use the LinkChecker extension for Firefox, while it did a decent job it did not check the validity of anchor links and it only checks one page at a time. The built in link checker for Dreamweaver can check all the links within your site but does a terrible job with anchor links. The Web Developer extension for Firefox allows quick access to the W3C Link Checker but the development server at my work blocked the robot so I was unable to use it. After using the W3C Link Checker at home I realized that I really need to make it available at work as well. So I got the “W3C-checklink” bot unblocked and instantly my life was easier!

Using the W3C Link Checker

When first using the W3C Link Checker it can be a little confusing. But fear not the good people over at W3C have provided a tool that is both simple to use and very well done. The main screen allows you to enter a url to check and a few options to check the url with. You can save your options in a cookie and have them automatically selected each time you go back to the site or you can modify your web developer tool bar to include your preset options. If the page you are checking does have broken links then you get a summary that includes a status code and the number of times that same type of error occurs as well as a quick description of how to fix it. If you do not know these status codes I suggest reading the HTTP/1.1: Status Code Definitions from w3.org since they are very basic status codes that all web professionals should know about. So start checking your links and learning the status codes and you will be on your way to creating better web sites with less effort.

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