Find Dead Pages and Files - Post ID...

User 2385998 Photo


Registered User
62 posts

My website has grown over the years: the best part of two decades. And there's hundreds of files in the folder tree and, as expected, there's lots of dead pages in there which should be removed.

Is there anyway to go get HTML editor to find which files are in use and which aren't starting from one initial file, i.e. the root page?

- Malc
Pam: "I wonder what my name means in Welsh"
Nessa: "Why?"
User 38401 Photo


Senior Advisor
10,951 posts

You can upload it, if it's not already, and use CoffeCup's Website Insight to check for dead links if I recall correctly.

You can also use Google's analytics stuff to check for bad, missing, dead links that need and for redirects needed.
User 2385998 Photo


Registered User
62 posts

Jo Ann

Thanks for the reply. It's not the dead links that's the problem it's the dead pages that I wish to cull. I have readers who are good at finding links to nowhere but there's so many images, pages, spreadsheets, PDFs and goodness knows what that are useless and I want to zap them.

Then I can find out what I have on my site and what needs to be updated. I could, I suppose write an application to go through the folder of my hard drive (and sub-folders) and then to have another to go through all the links on the site and to compare the two. But I would rather hope that there's a way of doing that with the HTML Editor as these dead files would be in the project.

So, another way to put this: is there any way of getting a list of orphaned files in an HTML Editor project?

The site has just been uploaded and has thankfully passed the Google Mobileness Test. So that's something positive done, and all in time for Beer O'Clock...

Malc
Pam: "I wonder what my name means in Welsh"
Nessa: "Why?"
User 38401 Photo


Senior Advisor
10,951 posts

Website Insight would help with all of that Malcolm,

It does more than just find dead links, it lists all of the images it finds, all the pages it finds (if you do the full domain rather than just page by page of course), pretty sure it lists all files found etc that are part of the website. If you haven't tried it yet, take the trial for a spin and see what I mean. It will help you know what things are used and what are not by listing those it finds being linked to and used on the pages that are uploaded.

The other thing you can try, would be a time consuming thing of course, but would be very exact would be to use the HTML Editor and do a Find for a file, image, etc. and make sure it's looking in a folder not just one page. This would bring up any place it found that image,file,page referenced on any pages. You'd have to search them out one by one, but it would do it.

I'd take a look at Website Insight trial first and see if that will do what you need. :)
User 2385998 Photo


Registered User
62 posts

Thanks for the advice, I will look into that tomorrow.

I think i looked at this years ago but discounted it then because I couldn't plug in a user-name/password for it to go into the members' area of the site. This was placed on the Wish List and, hopefully, fixed otherwise I would have to write a small tool to do this myself.

Cheers
Malc
Pam: "I wonder what my name means in Welsh"
Nessa: "Why?"
User 38401 Photo


Senior Advisor
10,951 posts

You shouldn't need to do anything to log in to any back end, just feed in the domain name of the site and it will scan the entire site and report all of it's findings, no backend needed for that :)

You will still need to do some footwork with it though, you'll need to use what it reports to compare what is in your files and folders to know what is and isn't being used.

I would highly suggest backing up your website files prior to deleting anything so you can put it back again in case of error or mistake.
User 2385998 Photo


Registered User
62 posts

Thanks, but what I mean is that when it hits the door where members sign in -- can it get past that?

Malc
Pam: "I wonder what my name means in Welsh"
Nessa: "Why?"
User 38401 Photo


Senior Advisor
10,951 posts

Good point, that I don't know, never tried to scan a site that had any protected files/folders, anyone else know if this works for that?
User 2385998 Photo


Registered User
62 posts

Bad hair day, Jo Ann?
Pam: "I wonder what my name means in Welsh"
Nessa: "Why?"
User 271657 Photo


Ambassador
3,816 posts

Careful, Malcolm – Jo Ann's been known to patrol the forums with an iron skillet in hand :lol:
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. (Douglas Adams)
https://www.callendales.com

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