[Bill Posters]

Anyone know of a utility that can check the life-signs of external links sitewide?
Basically, I"m doing some repairs on a friend's site and I'd like to check the validity of external links in the same way that DW already checks for broken internal links.

Is there anything for DW (Mac)?
Anything that can automate the process sitewide?

TIA

[smallbeer]

http://www.dead-links.com ?

[roto]

I don't know of anything, but I'll be paying careful attention to this thread as that would be a great utilitiy which I would utilize as well.

BUT, did you try the Macromedia DW forums(?):

http://webforums.macromedia.com/dreamweaver/

Originally Posted by smallbeer

http://www.dead-links.com ?

nice! (but I got some faulty 404 errors for links that were alive and well)

[Bill Posters]

Thanks all.

I gave that dead-links site a whirl and it does indeed appear to be incorrectly identifying some links as dead.

[edit]

Many of the reported dead links were the result of me testing the wrong (i.e. old) directory. :d'oh!:
Checking the right one seems to yield accurate results apart from one link getting a 500 server error on a site that is fine when checked manually.
I'm happy to assume that it's the automated nature of the http request or the UA of the search bot that is the issue.

[/edit]

Two other util-based solutions suggested at DO were:
BLT and
LinkChecker X

I'm also checking the DW Xchange now to see if there's anything available there.
I've not (properly) been to the MM site in quite a while as I bailed on them (their site and their products) after the mac-unfriendly fiasco that was their first site redesign about a year or so ago (maybe longer).
If anything particularly useful crops up, I'll post notice.


[edit]

d'oh!
The W3C have their own online link checker service too.
http://validator.w3.org/checklink

I recall this from ages ago, but clearly had forgotten it existed.

[/edit]