Web Site Monitoring

[geosha]

Not sure if I am posting in the right place ... but here goes ...

Our two sites are "Family History and Photo Albumns" and each contain 'millions' of links and 'millions' of photos
No fancy scripts or what-nots ... just URL's and images

We have had our account with PowWeb for a number of years and have been hassle free ... no problems or complaints at all ... everything just works when it should

For the first time ever I have checked the Web Stats
Don't really understand it all, and I guess I don't really need to ... most of our visitors are either friends or family ... not many people want to look at me!!

However, I did notice in the Web Stats that there is a note of some "404 Errors" and to me that means that either the page didn't load properly or the image didn't appear ... is that right??

The web site has too many pages, links and photos to check myself, though my wife and I sometimes look at 'old pages', especially at kid's birthdays, wedding anniversarys, Christmas, etc, etc ...
... and we have never found a link that doesn't work or a picture that didn't download properly ... but I guess you never know

My question ... does anyone know of some sort of Monitoring Service that I could join that would do checks on our sites??
I have looked at a couple of commercial programs, but they seem way too involved and technical
I just want something simple to make checks that our links are working and our photos are displaying
Or doesn't this type of Service exist??

Hope I have explained this properly

Regards
Geoff

[entrecon]

A 404 is usually page not found. You would see these if you re-named, moved, or deleted things. You would also see a 404 if someone/some bot was trying to guess standard page names that you may not have.

[tpoynton]

In AWstats, the 'referrers' column tells you where the problematic page is. If it is blank (-), then it's likely a bot guessing. however, I would not say that having something in the referrer column means that the referring page exists, or that a link is broken. at least that's been my experience.

if you use webalizer for your stats, i'm not sure how it is presented.

[Croc Hunter]

W3C has a free online link checker. I check recusively to a depth of 200. http://validator.w3.org/checklink

[geosha]

Hi, and appreciate your notes

My wife and I each have our own computers
What did we do on the weekend ??
Each of us spent an hour on Saturday and an hour on Sunday randomly checking our sites ... going from section-to-section ... clicking links here-and-there ... 'old' links/pages and 'new' links/pages

Every page worked ... and every image displayed as it should !!

Plus I put a notice on a couple of entry pages saying ... "Please let us know about broken links, etc ..."

Professional way to do things ?? ... I guess not, but ......

Searching for "Link Checker" in Google, there are lots of programs, including the W3C mentioned by 'Croc Hunter'
Lots of free offers, but for a couple of sites like ours with so many links, the costs start to climb !!
Might stick to Sharon and I doing spot checks every now and again

PLUS I'm 'really sure' there are no busted links on my sites !!

Regards
Geoff

[entrecon]

I am not sure they are fully broken, but something odd is going on.

I checked with the tool that Croc mentioned and it returned 35 "400 errors". The links seems to work, but it says they are malformed.

Maybe someone else here has some suggestions basked on This Report (http://validator.w3.org/checklink?check=Check&hide_type=all&summary=on&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ronebergcairns.com%2F#d1code_ 400)

Cleaning up the code my help..check the validator from taht same site: REPORT HERE (http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ronebergcairns.com&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0&st=1)

[geosha]

Looking at those reports 'scared the life' out of me !!

Got to admit though that I don't really understand all the lingo and language

Every page I have made over the past six or so years was by using "Adobe Page Mill 3"
It is WYSIWYG software, and has been a discontinued product for a long time
I happened to have a copy and find it easy to use and it does everything I want for our sites

What code and stuff it writes 'behind-the-scenes' ...... well, I haven't got a clue !!

After looking at the reports, I went to our page and checked every link and every photo/pic ... and they all work

I guess I have to say ...... "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" ...... and hope it stays that way !!

Regards ... need a smoke'n'coffee now !!
Geoff

[entrecon]

I didn't get a chance to look at the report earlier. I just looked at the link report and it appears that most of the 404 errors reported deal with the way images and links are being referenced.
<A HREF="../sharon2003_9909.html"><IMG SRC="../v00819.jpg"
WIDTH="275" HEIGHT="326" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0" NATURALSIZEFLAG="3"></A>
Since the images and files are in the root directory, the red part above is not needed.

The second report with the errors is not that terrible. One thing that it does show, that would be worth cleaning up, is that you have not specified an "alt" tag for most of your images. This tag would show text if the image doesn't load or if someone doesn't display the images for one reason or another.

One odd thing is that there seems to be several occasions when the program you are using closed a paragraph "</p>" when it was never opened "<p>". I don't know as this is a major problem, just strange that the program does it.

Pagemill is also adding the "NATURALSIZEFLAG" attribute which is not standard. I am not sure why the validator didn't catch it, but is something specific to pagemill and browsers are just ignoring it.

If it is working for you and you aren't getting complaints, you are probably OK. However, if your code is not standard, and has these error, it increases thes chances of some browsers not handling the page properly.

[geosha]

Hi over there in Michigan

Really appreciate you taking the time to set out those points and explanations

Naturally I would like for our sites to be available to any and all browsers

Not sure if it will fix the problem in the future ... but maybe it's time to update my WYSIWYG editor ... ???

Looking at these forums over a period of time, I have read "good things" about a program called NVU - http://nvu.com/
I will probably download that and 'muck-around' with it and see how I go

Thanks again for your attention

Geoff

[WATRD]

Not sure if it will fix the problem in the future ... but maybe it's time to update my WYSIWYG editor ... ???

Looking at these forums over a period of time, I have read "good things" about a program called NVU - http://nvu.com/
I will probably download that and 'muck-around' with it and see how I go

Thanks again for your attention

Geoff

Skip NVU and go straight to Kompozer. Development came to a screeching halt on NVU, so some folks picked it up, fixed a bunch of bugs, reworked some areas and added a bunch of features, to yield Kompozer. http://www.kompozer.net/

[geosha]

Appreciate the update, WATRD

Will give "Kompozer" a try

Geoff