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Technology Tip of the Week - December 13, 2006

Search and Destroy Those Broken Links

I've had some requests for some FrontPage tips so this week I thought I'd tackle those dreaded broken hyperlinks that happen to everyone's web site at some point. Broken hyperlinks are links that don't go anywhere. They are often caused by removing a page or by changing the location or name of a file. FrontPage has a very useful reporting tool that you can use to identify and fix broken hyperlinks called the Broken Hyperlinks Report (it's not a creative title but gets the point across).

Before you run the Broken Hyperlinks Report, you must first open a FrontPage Web site—the report cannot be run on individual pages. When you're ready, you can run the report from Reports view.

The report checks two kinds of hyperlinks: internal links and external links. Internal links point to pages within your own Web site, for example, syllabus.htm. External links point to sites outside your Web site. For example, you might have a link to http://www.ccri.edu on your page.

Any internal link that goes to a missing or misspelled page will have broken status. When a user clicks on the link, they'll get a "Page Not Found" error.  External links will initially have Unknown status. When you run the Broken Hyperlinks Report, FrontPage will ask you if you want to verify external links. This check ensures that your external links point to valid and available sites on the Web. If you choose "Yes," and are doing this from home, make sure your Internet connection is intact.

Repairing Internal Hyperlinks
  1. On the View menu, point to Reports, and then click Site Summary. In the list of reports, click Broken Hyperlinks. The Hyperlink column tells you where the link is pointing to. The In Page column tells you where the link is located. The Destination column tells you whether the link is Internal or External.
  2. In the Hyperlink column, double-click an Internal hyperlink with Broken status. You'll see the exact location of the link. If the problem is that the filename is misspelled  then type the correct file name in the Replace hyperlink with box. If you've deleted this page or renamed it, click on the Browse button to the right of the box and locate the correct file. (This happens to me all the time when I update a file and change the filename to reflect the revision - for example, when updating a spring_05_syllabus.htm to spring_06_syllabus.htm, but then forget to update the hyperlink pointing to the file.)
  3. Make sure that Change in all pages is selected, and then click Replace. All broken hyperlinks are now fixed on all pages, and the Report view is empty.
Verifying External Hyperlinks

Now let's explore how to verify and fix external hyperlinks. Remember that external hyperlinks point to destinations outside your Web site, which can change at any time.

  1. On the View menu, point to Reports, and then click Site Summary. In the list of reports, click Broken Hyperlinks. The Hyperlink column tells you where the link is pointing to. The In Page column tells you where the link is located. The Destination column tells you whether the link is Internal or External.
  2. The Reports View dialog box appears with the message "FrontPage can verify the hyperlinks in your Web site for you. Would you like to do this now?" Click Yes to verify that this is a valid external link. If the external link has OK status it means that the link points to a valid and available location outside your Web site. If the link pointed to an invalid location, or if it pointed to a site that was temporarily unavailable, the link would have Broken status. The link would also have Broken status if your connection to the Internet were unavailable. If you check over a couple of days and the web site remains unavailable, you should probably delete the link and find a different site.
  3. On the View menu, click Page to return to the page you were working on.
  4. On the File menu, click Save.

For more help with these features, please contact one of the IT Instructional Support team (Norm Grant, Gene Grande or Linda Beith) or faculty mentors Tony Basilico or Kathy Beauchene.

Website of the Week

Exploring Inner Space from URI

You are all familiar with the ongoing outer space exploration managed by NASA but did you know that Rhode Island is actually on the forefront of the first comprehensive underwater exploration? Dr. Bob Ballard from URI has been working on this initiative for the past few years and has secured more than $2 million in federal and state funds for the technology to operate the Inner Space Center at URI, which he describes as the ocean equivalent of the NASA command center for space exploration. From the Inner Space Center, signals from research vessels on the ocean will be transmitted through a satellite telecommunication system to a replica of the shipboard control center at URI's Graduate School of Oceanography. The center will include workstations linked to Internet1 and Internet2 to provide students, faculty and researchers with live access to oceanographic expeditions. Students will even be able to control some of the robots in places like Monterey Bay from the URI center. This has enormous potential for making math and the sciences really come alive for students and there are plans in the works now for exciting new curriculum.

For more information on this venture please see http://iao.gso.uri.edu/operations/innerspacecenter.php

Feel free to post your thoughts or opinions of this site in the Teaching Forum message board.

These tips are provided by the Department of Information Technology instructional support team. If you have any questions on these tips, or wish to offer your own, please feel free to contact Linda Beith at lbeith@ccri.edu. View an archive of past technology tips at http://it.ccri.edu/Training/Tips/tip_week.shtml.
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