Website cleanup

[RICHARD BROMBERG]

A couple of years ago I was tasked with maintaing a web site that had been
built by someone else. I am using Frontpage 2000.

Their work habits were no better than mine and now there are dozens of
images that were uploaded to the Host and likewise dozens of old HTML files
that are completely orphaned, i.e. nothing references them.

Does anyone have a suggestion or know of a utility that will identify these
unused files so I can clean up the site.

 

[Alan J. Flavell]

Their work habits were no better than mine and now there are dozens
of images that were uploaded to the Host and likewise dozens of old
HTML files that are completely orphaned, i.e. nothing references
them.

Does anyone have a suggestion or know of a utility that will
identify these unused files so I can clean up the site.

Recent versions of Xenu link checker can do that
http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

A fast and generally recommended link checker, but it has some known
shortcomings. It uses Windows' own routines for accessing URLs, and
they perform some silent fixups (e.g correcting "\" to "/") before the
link checker gets to see them, which means those kind of broken link
cannot be found.

See http://members.chello.nl/f.visser3/xenu/10-orphaned-files.html for
thirdparty documentation.

However, a comment I found elsewhere says that the ophan check doesn't
recognise images that are only called-out from a stylesheet.


Personally, when getting rid of believed-to-be-orphaned files, I
set their filemode on the server so that the HTTPD cannot read them,
and then watch out for any corresponding errors in the logs for a
while, before finally deleting them. That way, it's easy to reinstate
any that weren't really orphaned.

h t h

 

[RICHARD BROMBERG]

Alan

The Mcafee Site Advisor warns that http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html
will download unwanted spyware, and other junk so I don't think I will use
it.

Mcafee Site Advisor is a free download that rates websites for safety.

Check it out.

 

[RICHARD BROMBERG]

Thanks

I like that idea better than permenantly deleting stuff.

 

[Stan McCann]

Personally, when getting rid of believed-to-be-orphaned files, I
set their filemode on the server so that the HTTPD cannot read them,
and then watch out for any corresponding errors in the logs for a
while, before finally deleting them. That way, it's easy to
reinstate any that weren't really orphaned.

I do something similar. Rather than messing with file attributes, I
rename the files placing a common extension on all files. That way, I
can delete the whole lot in one go by deleting everything in the web
space with that file extension. I usually use a file extension like
6.7.6 so somepage.html becomes somepage.html.6.7.6 and somegif.gif
becomes somegif.gif.6.7.6; same for jpg, css, php or whatever. Maybe
not better, but a bit different.