Don’t fret the next time you have to check a large list of links to discover which are dead and which are live, Dead Link Checker can check your list for you in next to no time.

Most regular visitors to JournalXtra are aware of the Webmaster Marketing Tools that I compiled to make it easier to submit websites, blogs and ebooks etc.. to relevant directory, ping service and syndication sites as well as to submit press releases. Websites come and go over time and so links to them expire. Every once in a while I recheck those links, hundreds of them, for activity. If I checked those links manually by clicking them one-by-one it would take me a week or two to keep those tools up to date.

One method used to check for dead links is to use software that reads a webpage or website and attempts to load each link. Such software can be set to check links on the pages to which links on the tested page lead and to further depth if required. For example, these programs will check links on page one, links on the pages lead to by links on page one, links on the pages to which the links on page two lead and so on….

A few of these link check programs are:

• KLinkStatus (Linux)
• Linkchecker
• Xenu’s Link Sleuth (Windows)

A more exhaustive list of URL checker tools is at the bottom of this page along with the download link for Dead Link Checker.

This type of link check program has two huge limitations:

1. they check all links on a specified page. One cannot specify which links are checked and which links are not;
2. the links they check must be placed with in a webpage that is stored and loaded by a web server.

It is not difficult to see how those limitations can become hindrances to anyone wishing to check the activity of a specific set of links within a webpage or website with many links that need not be checked.

Thankfully, there is a perl script called Dead Link Checker which will run through a list of links in a file that is stored on a local machine, test them for activity and write each result to an HTML formatted file.

Dead Link Checker places each link into an HTML file (which it automatically creates) categorized by server response code. Each tested link that returns 3xx or 4xx server codes (for example 301 or 403) is written into the HTML file alongside any page to which it redirects. This makes it easy to decide whether a link is dead or just redirected to an updated version of the page.

Many page redirects are only between the http:// and http://www. URL preference of a site’s webmaster.

Here’s an example of how to use it. Example pages provided. All work is performed from within the same  folder:

1. create a text file (links.txt)
2. paste the collection of URLs into the file (links.txt) – it might look like this
   
3. format the links so that they only describe the URL from HTTP:// to .COM or .NET etc… i.e remove any superfluous text – it might now look like this . Use the Text Manipulation FAQs if you need help to quickly edit large text files.
   
4. open a terminal (Konsole or console) in the folder that holds the text file (links.txt)
5. type the command


deadlinkcheck -HTMLoutput -noCache -Verb links.txt > checked.html


6. that command will provide an HTML file called checked.html out of the links it checks from the file links.txt – it might look like this
   
7. load the created HTML file (checked.html) in a web browser
8. also load the HTMl file (checked.html) in a text editor (I use Kate) – it might look like this
   
9. read the links and manually remove the bad ones from the HTML file loaded in the text editor
   • those with a 2xx result are Live so should be kept
   • those with a 3xx result are redirecting to somewhere else so check that the redirect is not to a totally different site; if it is then that link is probably dead so check them manually to confirm their status
   • those with a 4xx result lead to non found pages. Check them manually to confirm whether they are active or dead. Dead Link Checker relies on the server response, not all servers give a correct response
   • those with a 5xx result will likely never load. Check them manually
10. use the text editor to reformat the links in the HTML file (checked.html) once the bad links have been removed from it (Instructions provided assume the use of Kate)
    • convert all characters to lower case (Tools>Lowercase)
    • remove superfluous characters with sed:
    • open find and replace (ctrl+r)
    • find

    
       


    • replace it with

    
|


    • (or some other character that is not reproduced anywhere within the file)
    • Use Alt+A to replace all occurrences.
    • find

    
<code>|-> </code>


    • replace it with nothing (i.e just remove it)
    • find

    
<b>


    • replace it with nothing (i.e just remove it)
    • find

    
</b>


    • replace it with nothing (i.e just remove it)
    • find

    
</a><br>


    • replace it with

    
</a>


    • Manually remove anything that isn’t between a tags (<a> and </a>)
    • use a terminal (Konsole or Console) – open it from within the folder that holds the HTML file (checked.html) and enter this command

    
sed 's/.*|//g' checked.html > links.txt


    • That command removes anything in a line that is written in front of a pipe “|” (inclusive of the pipe) and places all the links into a the file links.txt
11. The file links.txt will now contain the checked, active URLs from the original list formatted within <a> tags with anchor text equal to the link e.g


<a href="http://journalxtra.com">http://journalxtra.com</a>

It will look similar to this


12. If required, alter the anchor text to remove the http:// and .com (or .net etc…) components.

Intelligent use of Dead Link Checker can transform a task that would usually take a week or two to complete into one that takes less than 20 minutes.

I do not whether DLC works in Windows. Use a Linux Live Disk (Kubuntu or Linux Mint) if it doesn’t.

Download Link

Download Dead Link Checker:

• Sourceforge
• Its user guide is available  here (also at Sourceforge)

List of Link Checker Software

These URL checker tools check links loaded within webpages served online only.

Run from a local PC

• Checklinks
• Dead link check
• gURLChecker
• KLinkStatus
• Linkchecker
• link-checker
• linklint
• webcheck
• webgrep
• Xenu’s Link Sleuth

HTML interface

• W3C Link Checker

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Don't panic !! It's only a picture of one I caught earlier.

I apologise if you were affected by the recent bug encountered by some visitors when they accessed this site. The bug caused some desktop PC user’s to see the mobile and PDA version of JournalXtra. It was caused by a plugin update and the issue has now been resolved.

For those who want a little more information, the plugin is called WPtouch iPhone Theme and is designed to switch visitors with mobile phones and PDAs to a site theme specifically designed for them. It hasn’t affected any of my other Wordpress blogs so it will be related to a configuration setting.

I knew about the update but didn’t catch the bug until I visited the site as a non administrator. I will keep it disabled until it is next updated. Hopefully, the issue will be fixed then; if not, I will re-activate it and play with its settings.

Now the plugin is deactivated, visitors who access JournalXtra through a PDA, mobile phone or iPhone will get the regular theme which can appear a little bloated to them. I apologise to you if this is an inconvenience to you. Use the RSS feed if you really do want to see the non-aesthetically pleasing site version.

Normal mobile, PDA and iPhone service will resume shortly.

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Updated Wed, 3rd Feb. 2010

We Wordpress bloggers are a funny lot. We style our sites with a theme, we edit it to get it how we want it, we think it’s perfect and then we see another theme that’s even more perfect so we start over again. Some of us even go so far as to learn to create our own “perfect” themes only to decide that the next pre-made one we see is even better. I suppose we just get bored very quickly. Well I know I do; and I get very annoyed with myself because each time I use a new theme I have to set it up to work with my plugins, ad server, widgets and content styling. So it was an absolute pleasure to find a very customizable theme that keeps my settings even after it’s been updated by the theme’s creator. It’s called Suffusion and has more options than a Jumbo Jet’s cockpit has buttons. Thankfully, its front cover comes with those immortal words from The Guide, “Don’t Panic”, written on it in big red letters.

In those imortal words: "DON'T PANIC"

I’m sure the number 42 features in there somewhere as well but I won’t know for definite until I’ve gotten ’round to counting all the lovely options provide for configuring the framework and theme.

It’s not as difficult to configure as it appears. This theme is bursting at its seams with configuration options and it is worth your while to take a look at them and learn how to use them. An overview of those features will follow shortly.

It has 16, yes, sixteen, default already configured theme styles available to its users. Just take a look at these:

Choices, choices...

O.K, so 8 of them are black and 8 of them are white but that still makes 16 and I’m not budging from that count; not even if you twist my arm up my back and smack me on my head with your biggest knuckle. The theme’s creator has already has designs for new theme styles and has stated he will add them into the framework as soon as he can.

The default themes can be used as they are or as templates for personal designs. They’re about as configurable as a template can be so it’s very easy to make your site look and feel how you want it to:

All of the colors can be changed,

The font can be selected from a list of websafe ones that accounts for browser differences,

There are two ways to change the page width – either specify a desired width for the whole page or specify desired widths for the sidebars and content area and let the framework calculate the full page width,

It has five widget areas – one horizontal bar for the top, one horizontal bar for the bottom, two vertical bars for the sides and a small widget for the header,

The header and footer graphics can be specified or a gradient can be fashioned with the specification of two colors and its direction,

The widgets can be moved about within their bars by site visitors (this option can be turned off),

It has 10 pre-designed templates. Each one is individually configurable from within the theme’s options pages,

It has inbuilt Google Analytics support,

It has inbuilt search engine optimization options (SEO) in a similar but less complex fashion as Greg’s High Performance SEO plugin,

CSS can be specified…

The list of options just keeps on growing. This is the current full list of configurable components:

Visual Effects

• Theme selection
• Header Customization
• Body Background Settings
• Body Font Settings
• Sidebars and Widget Areas
• Widget Styles
• Footer Customization
• Sizes and Margins
• Custom Emphasis Elements

Blog Features

• Navigation Bar Setup
• Posts and Pages
• Excerpts / Full Contents
• SEO / Meta Settings
• Comment Settings
• Featured Content
• Tabbed Sidebar
• Page Navigation
• User Profiles
• Analytics
• OpenID Setup
• Custom CSS, JavaScript & RSS

Templates

• Magazine
• Single Category
• All Categories
• Single Author
• No Sidebars
• Single Left Sidebar
• Single Right Sidebar
• Single Left, Single Right Sidebar
• Double Left Sidebars
• Double Right Sidebars

Built in Widgets

• Follow Me (very attractive social bookmarking widget)
• Google Translator
• Twitter

The theme also supports widget shortcodes (the little [tags] used by some plugins to effect their insertion into posts).

If you haven’t guessed, I am very impressed with this theme and one of my favorite parts is that updates do not undo my hard work at customization. It has only one downsides:

1. the theme doesn’t always download and install properly via the Wordpress Add New Themes installer. The solution is to either re-download it via the installer or to manually upload and unzip it to your webserver into wp-content/themes. Upload it manually if the first activation of the theme fails or just delete the theme folder (suffusion) from wp-content/themes/ to restore your admin panel. This bug is rare and is wholly caused by errors with the Wordpress download page and not the theme.

Its creator, Sayontan, is a genius and he regularly updates the theme and implements user suggestions so if you try it now and think of a feature you’d like it to have you might be able to get your feature added into the theme within the next few releases by adding your suggestion to his forum (details below).

Those details in brief

Theme Title: Suffusion

Download: from Wordpress.org

Support: from the developer’s forum

Upside: It’s very configurable and is under regular development

Downside: Pages do not display in the navigation bar until selected to do so.

Alternatives: create a template from scratch, use a template generator or try the Atahualpa theme or Swift.

All in all, this is the most configurable Wordpress theme I’ve seen in a very long time.

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