Trying to help with Forum dead links

[novacadian]

It seems it was in error to report to moderators about links in posts which are now dead. This was discovered after working my way through the forum to the topic below.

http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=35710.0

My apologies for the 4 reports which were made via the Report to moderator link.

My suggestion would be that the link be retitled to Report Abuse to moderator.

Do moderators want to be informed of postings that are now outdated, in terms of links in the posts?

If not, then my suggestion would be to create an Archive area which would contain old and out of date postings and threads. This would help new forum members, as myself, to know that that area is not expected to be current and should be saved for reading once the current threads have been consumed.

- Nova

[neko kyouran]

all that has to be fixed with them is to change hydlaa.com to hydlaaplaza.com and they work again.

theres tons and tons that need fixing.  i was working on a script to do it once, but things got busy.  I've fixed all the stickies, but if you come across other posts that needfixing you want fixed, you can just post em here i guess and we can take of it.   

don't worry about the reports.  it wasn't any big deal.

[novacadian]

all that has to be fixed with them is to change hydlaa.com to hydlaaplaza.com and they work again.

theres tons and tons that need fixing.  i was working on a script to do it once, but things got busy. 

Perhaps that is one area where my skill set may be able to contribute to the PlaneShift community.  It includes working on PHP projects and a lot of work on MySQL back end projects; mostly using Perl's DBI interface. When it is possible for me to pm, here on the forum, my resume will be sent your way for consideration.

- Nova

[bilbous]

That is not exactly true neko, I am certain that many of the bad links are the result of the linked material no longer being available. Some links I have posted are definitely in that situation due to a nasty webhost breakdown I had some time ago.

Your script would need to determine when urls have gone bad as well as ones which resulted from the forum move. You'd think it was a common enough situation that the forum software would have built-in tools, one to export links in case of a site move and another one to remove dead links.

[novacadian]

Using such Perl modules as Data::Dumper and WWW::Mechanize one could have the script check for the WWW equivalent of the Blue Screen (ie 404 error) or if a legit HTML page is returned.

It may be wise to check what is returned to see if such words as sexy, enlargement, etc. are found on the returned page to ensure the URL has not been taken over by some domain spammer. If it passes a reasonable test that it is still a valid link then leave it. If not then replace it with a link to a page that explains that the site seems to have been taken down. Such links could be double checked manually to ensure that the script was correct in its decision making.  

The script could work in two phases. First trying to identify broken links; then after manual checking to give the script the ok to change them.

P.S.  WWW::Mechanize could easily identify the links broken due to Forum Moves; as that could be parsed from the scrape.

[hulla]

hello all

i dont know about the link who give acces for an "old page" of the forum but for the web and manny of the "old broken link" you can found everywhere
i know a "nice help"
the " Way back machine" of the internet archive

http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

realy helpfull whit a LOT of copy of old web pages inside

[neko kyouran]

all i was going to have it do is take www.hydlaa.com and replace it with www.hydlaaplaza.com.

I don't care about all those other broken links to external websites.

[novacadian]

all i was going to have it do is take www.hydlaa.com and replace it with www.hydlaaplaza.com.

I don't care about all those other broken links to external websites.

Well that sounds a lot more trivial than some thoughts bouncing around in my mind.   

Your reply comes at a coincidental time; as this will be my official tenth note.