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Verifying Hyperlinks

• How to find broken hyperlinks
• How to fix broken hyperlinks
• How to Print a Broken Links Report in FrontPage 2000

List broken hyperlinks

Few things irritate site visitors as much broken hyperlinks — links that don't lead anywhere or point to "dead ends," pages or Web sites that have been renamed, moved, deleted, or assigned different URLs. Part of good web maintenance involves regularly checking for broken hyperlinks and fixing or deleting them.

Note   If your web contains files located in hidden folders, those files will not be included in this report. To include files in hidden folders in your reports, click Web Settings on the Tools menu, click the Advanced tab, and then select the Show documents in hidden directories check box.

• To see the number of broken hyperlinks in your web, on the View menu, point to Reports, and then click Site Summary. In the Broken hyperlinks row, the Count column list the number of broken hyperlinks in your web.
• To see a detailed list of the broken hyperlinks in your web, on the View menu, point to Reports, and then click Broken Hyperlinks.

Tips

• The first time you create the Site Summary or Broken Hyperlinks reports, the count of broken hyperlinks is listed as 0, while the count of unverified hyperlinks equals the total number of hyperlinks in your web. This is because Microsoft FrontPage initially lists all hyperlinks as unverified. To verify hyperlinks, click Recalculate Hyperlinks on the Tools menu.

Note   If there are many external hyperlinks in your web, it may take several minutes for FrontPage to carry out this command, because it must connect to each external Web site to verify the hyperlink.

• In the Site Summary report, you can double-click the Broken hyperlinks row to display the Broken Hyperlinks report. In this report, you can do the following:
• Double-click a hyperlink to open and edit it, and apply the change to selected pages or all pages in which that hyperlink appears.
• To edit the page containing a broken hyperlink, right-click the hyperlink and then click Edit Page on the shortcut menu.

Repair broken hyperlinks

While working on a web, you should occasionally check to see if the web has broken hyperlinks and if it does, repair them. A broken hyperlink is one that has an invalid destination URL and will return an error if the site visitor clicks the hyperlink.

A hyperlink might have an invalid URL for various reasons; you might have mistyped it, or, if the destination page is on another World Wide Web site, the page might have been changed or removed.

1. On the View menu, point to Reports, and then click Broken Hyperlinks.
   All broken hyperlinks in the web are listed. If a hyperlink's destination is not in the current web, the status of the hyperlink is Unknown.
2. First click on In Page. By doing this FrontPage will sort all files by folders in alphabetical order. Select the files, you are assigned to and right-click on the selection. 
   You will get pop-up menu ( see picture below ) and select Verify.  The Status will be changed to Broken or OK.  
3. Right-click a hyperlink with Broken status.
4. To display the page to edit it, click Edit Hyperlink.

1. If you know the correct URL of the destination, edit it in the Replace hyperlink with box. Or, click Browse to browse to the page or file in a web, file system, or World Wide Web.
2. To repair other occurrences of this hyperlink in all pages in the current web, click Change in all pages.
3. To repair other occurrences of this hyperlink in selected pages, click Change in selected pages, and then select the pages.
4. Click Replace.
5. If you want to edit the hyperlink on the page itself, click Edit Page button and FrontPage will display the page for you with the broken hyperlink  being already highlighted for you.

If the hyperlink's destination is not in the current web, the status of the hyperlink changes to Unknown. If the destination is valid, the hyperlink is no longer displayed in the Broken Hyperlinks report.

How to Print a Broken Links Report in FrontPage 2000

by Tina Clarke

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A FrontPage question that is frequently asked is "How do I print a list of the broken hyperlinks that are generated by the FrontPage 2000 reports feature?"

Well Mark Rogers of Site crafters (sitecrafters.com) has come up with the answer. Herein we go into a bit more detail:

Firstly you Verify Hyperlinks. (NOTE: You must be ONLINE to use this feature. Open FrontPage, then go to the File Menu and select Open. Type the URL of your website in the File Name box at the bottom.)

To do this you click on View on the FrontPage Menu Bar and select Reports, then Broken Hyperlinks.

Tip: FrontPage will count links that have redirects on them as a 'broken hyperlink'.

Tip: Urls that are too long will also be counted as 'broken'

To verify hyperlinks, click on the Verify Hyperlinks Button on the Reporting Toolbar. (If you cannot see this toolbar, go to the View Menu and select Toolbars, then Reporting.) You can either 'Verify all Hyperlinks' or 'Verify Selected Hyperlink(s)'

Tip: Modified pages should be saved to check the most current version of the web.

After using Verify Hyperlinks, you must add the broken hyperlink to the task list.

Tip: To make sure you do not miss any broken hyperlinks click on the column heading that says "Status" to group all broken links together.

Right click on any broken link and choose 'Add Task' from the menu that pops up. Assign your priority rating, and fill in any details in the description box that you would like to add. You have to add one space after the details that are already there and then enter your text. If you don't, it will not show up in tasks view and the todo.htm list. Click Ok. Do this for all the broken hyperlinks you want to print out.

After adding the Broken Links in 'Add Task' you can view the 'To Do' list and print it if you wish. The path is _vti_pvt/_x_todo.htm. The 'To Do' list presents the links on your site (which is on your hard drive) as clickable. Depending on which Personal Web Server you use, your route to the To Do list will be different. I use Microsoft PWS so mine is C:\WEBSHARE\WWWROOT\ _vti_pvt\_x_todo.htm. If you're working with disk-based webs just insert the path of your site on your hard drive before \_vti_pvt\_x_todo.htm (example: C:\My Documents\My Webs\ mysite\_vti_pvt\_x_todo.htm, where "mysite" is the name of your web).

Tip: These files are hidden so you may need to check the 'Show Hidden Files' option in Windows Explorer. (View Menu |Folder Options |View tab).

If you have a large site, after verifying your hyperlinks you can come offline and select each link and add the task. Then work on the links a batch at a time.

Of course there are other solutions to this problem out there and one is the Freeware application Xenu. Xenu's Link Sleuth™ is a spidering software program that checks websites for broken links. Link verification is done on "normal" links, images, frames, backgrounds, local image maps, style sheets, scripts and applets. It displays a continuously updated list of URLs, which you can sort by different criteria. A report can be produced at any time. Whichever way you decide to check your links, do it at least once a month or once a week if you can, keeping your site constantly refreshed.

First Published in ABC ~ All 'Bout Computers
Volume 2, July 2001

Last updated on 05/21/2012