3: Link Validation

Iosphere 2 contains some useful tools for keeping your site in order. One of these is the Link Checker. It will traverse your site from the main index page, following every hyperlink to make sure each is valid.

The Link Checker is represented by on the toolbar. When you click this button the following will be displayed at the bottom of the Iosphere window:

This new window will show you all of the links which are invalid or couldn't be checked. The button with the red square indicates that checking is in progress - click the button to stop checking. If you click the main Link Checker button on the Iosphere toolbar again, checking will be stopped and the window will be hidden.

As checking progresses, you will see information about links which are not valid or could not be verified. Valid links are not shown. The icons used to represent the link status are as follows:

	Broken Link - this link has been checked and does not point at a file.
	Check Timed Out - Iosphere could not check this link because it was taking too long. You will see this on hyperlinks which point to Internet sites if you are connected to the Internet. You should check the link later, in case the website is temporarily down.
	Unknown Link - The link could not be verified because it uses an unsupported protocol. Only files on your hard disk and web servers (HTTP protocol) can be checked automatically. Email links (mailto:) and FTP servers will not be checked, but will be displayed in the list.
	Unverified Link - The link could not be verified, because it resulted in a redirection or unknown response. It is not possible to automatically identify whether the link is, in fact, valid. The URL should be checked manually.

If you wish to re-run link validation, click the green arrow (which will light when checking has completed).

Configuring the Link Checker

Currently the link checker has only two options in Project|Properties, on the "Link Checker" tab.

Check External Links determines whether Iosphere should attempt to check links which are not part of your website. If you uncheck the option link validation will proceed faster, however broken links to external sites will not be identified. This is usually used to prevent Iosphere checking external sites when no Internet connection is present.

Connection Timeout specifies how long, in seconds, to wait for a web page before giving up. If you set this to a low number then checking will proceed faster if you have a lot of broken external links or no Internet connection, but slower sites may timeout - requiring manual checking later.