My organisation has recently changed the web site from HTML to ASP.

My branch was one of the first to change so that many of my ASP pages had to retain links to HTML pages in other branches.

While I have been away many of these branches have converted and more are happening each day as the 30 June deadline for conversion approaches.

I have about 300 ASP pages. I want to search them all for any reference to .htm. The problem is every page has test-page.htm in the header.

What I need is a way to tag all files that contain any .htm reference except for test-page.htm.

Any suggestions?

Of course this won't solve all my broken link problems. As branches convert many are also changing the directory structure of their web site so links to .doc, .xls and .pdf files will also be broken.

The conversion also involves using Javascript menus. The broken link tool I used to use Xenu http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html which is brilliant for HTML and ColdFusion pages doesn't work with ASP or Javascript. I have spoken to the author about this.

A week or so I ago I found Web Link Validator http://www.relsoftware.com/wlv/ on the front cover of Australian Personal Computer magazine. It works with Javascript and ASP.

It looks good but it reported that I had no broken links. At first I was quite pleased with myself because I thought my manual checking methods must have worked but then reality broke through.

The reason I'm not seeing any broken links is because our web site has an error handling system that generates a fancy error screen asking people to report broken links by clicking on a link. Any broken link software sees this as a valid page. Aagh! The outsourced IT people tell me it can't (or won't) be turned off, even after hours. I love handing our systems to outsourced people. Not!

This means that automatic methods don't work. I am in the process of checking everything manually.

Most of the web site is driven out of a database. I have dumped the links to a spreadsheet and I am checking them manually. There are nearly 3000 links!

Another tool I use is IE Booster http://www.paessler.com/products/ieb/index.html that has an option to generate a page showing all links (and graphics) on a page. I can then dump this page into a spreadsheet and click on each link.

My boss keeps asking what other branches are doing. I suspect they may not have as many outside links as we do. As the Project Management Branch we call on the resources of nearly every other branch in the organisation whereas they are all more inward looking.

Hope this info is of use to someone.

Andrew Watson