How To Find Broken Links on Your Site?

Broken links are nothing more than links inside your website that point to pages that don't exist. Maybe you deleted the page because it was not relevant anymore, or maybe your simply used a wrong URL when creating the link. Fact is that when a user clicks on one of those links he will see a frustrating 404 error page. 

It is easy to see how broken links can negatively affect the user experience inside your site. Apart from annoying your human visitors, though, broken links also upset search engine bots, and if your site has too many of them your search rankings might suffer.

For these reasons I recommend that you check for broken links on your site at least twice a year.

Now if you have a large blog or website it would be impossible to check all the links manually right? Luckily there is a great tool that you can use for this purpose, called Xenu's Link Sleuth, or simply Xenu.

Don't worry you won't need to pay anything, just download it and install on your computer (it only runs on Windows).

Here is the official site: http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

The design of the site is horrible, I know, but it is a legitimate project.

Once you have the tool running, just type the URL of your website and it will start crawling all the links. Link verification is done on "normal" links, images, frames, plug-ins, backgrounds, and so on.

You will be able to follow the process, and in the end you will see a report with all the broken links, redirects, valid URLs and more.

It is really a nifty piece of software, and a must have on the tool-belt of any webmaster.

Make sure to visit again at http://www.anilkmishra.blogspot.com, for latest trends and techniques in ICT.

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Cast your net wide the best 20 web apps

Everyone likes creating lists—be it the top 50 movies or the 100 greatest songs of all time. We decided to come up with a best-of-Web apps list. You may not agree with some of the apps on our list, but then who said making lists also means pleasing everyone?

1. Zoho Docs
Zoho is an online full-function office suite that lets you create and edit word documents, spreadsheets and presentations, among other things. But wait a minute, why not Google Docs? It was a tough call between our numero uno Web app and the old favourite Google Docs. The reason we chose Zoho is because frankly we're tired of the minor irritants Google Docs keeps throwing up and we value its adherence to its desktop roots in terms of UI.


2. Dropbox
Without a doubt the best file-syncing Web app out there. It's a cross platform and allows you to sync your files across multiple systems, be it Linux-, Mac- or Windows-based. The best part is that apart from syncing folders seamlessly, it also keeps a copy of your files on the cloud.

3. Last.fm
Last.fm is by far the ultimate music discovery app out there. Apart from playing similar artistes on call, this service has a social feel to it—allowing you to connect with people with similar music tastes.

4. ScreenToaster
ScreenToaster is a free Web-based screen capture tool. Registration is not compulsory. All you need to do is visit the site and click Record. This one is a clear-cut replacement of desktop applications such as CamStudio. The only trouble is the app suffers a lot of downtime.

5. Evernote
An online note-taking-cum-clipboard application is something most people have come to need. The Web app allows you to save/organize notes, pictures and reminders from anywhere on the Web. iClippy and SpringPad were contenders, but Evernote nudged them out ever so slightly.

6. Grooveshark
Online music is the only category in which we have two Web apps instead of featuring just one. Grooveshark is the best place on the Web for playing music instantly. Sure, you can make playlists and blah, but if you need a song, and need it now, this is the app!

7. Ge.tt
With Ge.tt you can share files instantly with anyone. Simply upload the file and share the link. What's unique is that there's no size limit and people can start downloading your shared files while you're uploading from your end. If you choose to register, you get stats and analytics too.

8. Pixlr
No Web apps list can be complete without a powerful image-editing application. The Web offers many choices—from basic ones such as Fotoflexer, Lunapic, Picnik and Adobe Photoshop's online version Photoshop Express to an advanced class of editors such as Pixlr, Aviary Phoenix, Splashup and Sumo Paint. After pushing at all of them till they broke, we arrived at Pixlr. If you want to get some serious photoediting done online, Pixlr is the app that truly delivers.

9. Penzu
Penzu is an online personal diary app with special emphasis on privacy and security. The UI is like an old school writing pad or journal where you can pen down your thoughts at the end of a long tiring day.

10. Bitlet.org
This is a cross platform Bit Torrent program that lets you enable your very own Bit Torrent client in the cloud. The Java-based app can load torrent files from a URL or from a local drive. You can set the incoming port and upload limit. It even supports resuming as long as you save in the same location. You can also stream audio as MP3 or Ogg Vorbis format.

11. JotForm
Need to create a feedback or survey form, but don't know Web programming? Sure there's Google Docs Forms, or paid options such as Wufoo and FormStack, but this one is just as powerful and easier to use with its drag and drop functionality. Simply make a form, embed anywhere and receive responses via email.

12. KeepVid
KeepVid is a Web app that allows you to instantly download any video you're currently streaming. It supports sites such as YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe, Putfile and more. Simply paste the URL in the Web UI or use the bookmarklet.

13. DropMocks
Sure you have Picasa and Flikr to create image galleries but what if you want to create a gallery instantaneously? DropMocks is the easiest way to create and share nice-looking image galleries online. All you need to do is drag your image files on to the DropMocks page, and the app will do the rest. Copy link to share your image gallery.

14. PDFmyUrl
Have URL, will convert! Can't get simpler than that. And the PDFs come out in good quality with minimal file size. 5,237,544 PDFs served at the time of writing this.

15. Imo.im
Web-based messengers were perhaps the first Web apps ever to exist. People used them to get around their office IT policy. There's a lot of 'em around, but Imo.im in our opinion is the simplest, most easy to use and fairly reliable.

16. PDFescape
Speaking of PDFs, isn't it difficult to manipulate them even with desktop applications? Here's a Web tool that allows you to fill in PDF forms and generally annotate and manipulate PDFs however you want—be it rearranging pages, typing text, adding links, even erasing and highlighting. The app won a place in this list by a whisker compared with FillanyPDF—another similar Web app that even lets you collect data via PDF forms.

17. Prezi
When you think "presentations", you think "slides", right? Well here's an online presentation tool that's going to redefine how we give presentations. It uses a huge canvas and zooms on important content contextually. On a side note, you will most definitely also want to check out SlideRocket for adding regular spice to conventionality.

18. Online.movavi.com
Transcoding video can be a resource-intensive task. With this app you get to transfer the load to the cloud. The app supports several input/output formats and even presets for popular mobile devices.

19. Torrent2exe
Wouldn't it be nice if you could package a torrent as an executable file that launches with its own inbuilt Bit Torrent client? This Web app does just that. Simply share the file on your blog post (or wherever) and users can download your content in a hassle-free manner.

20. Vuvox
Vuvox is a cutting-edge Web app that allows you to transform simple pictures into an interactive, motion-driven collage. It's a great tool for photobloggers, students or just about anyone who wants to showcase a subject in a fun way.

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Add blog to web site

You see blogs everywhere nowadays. Why have blogs become more popular than conventional web sites? Because they are is much easier to maintain and update. Blog software lets you add, edit and deleted web pages and content through a nice graphical user interface and you don't need to mess with any web programming (including the simple HTML). Now there are several ways to add a blog to a web site and the method you choose would depend on your technical expertise, available resources and the platform on which the web site is hosted. On this page, we shall look at the simplest way to get this done first and then move to more complex options.

Get a blog from a free service and link to it from your existing web site

The easiest and quickest way is to get a free blog and provide a link to it from your existing web site. There are tons of services that will let you make a blog for free - Google's Blogger is probably the most popular of them all. These free blogs can also be customized to reflect your actual web site's layout and colors. Remember the free blog will be hosted on another server though you may be able to get it on your too - this depends on the service you choose.

Add a professional blog to your web site

Obviously, free blogs have limited options. For a professional approach, shell out a few dollars each month and get a fully customized blog. Your blog can actually look exactly like your web site. You again provide a simple link from your existing site to the blog.

Install blog software on your web site through the control panel

Many web hosting companies let you install blog software such as the famous WordPress with a click of a mouse. This is typically done via the Fantastico script library - check with your hosting company. Such blogs can be made to install in a subdirectory on the web server space - don't put them in the document root else the blog will replace your main web site. You can then link to it from your web sites pages.

WordPress is very flexible blog software. You can use a premade design (there are available aplenty on the web), buy one that fits your requirements or even have a template made that looks exactly like your present site.

Install blog on your web site manually

This is a more complex approach and involves download, uploading and then installing blog software on your web server. The options depend on the choice of software and the configuration of the web server.

Which method do I advice?

For business and professional web sites, I suggest going in with the Fantastico option. The only requirement is having PHP and MySQL running on your web server. I recommend Hostgator and Lunarpages web hosting companies who provide excellent hosting plans with the Fantastico scripts library in the control panel.

If you were looking to create a blog web site from scratch, please refer that link for more information.

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