Re: problems with W3C Link checker

> Dear Sirs;
>   I have found your Link Checker (at 
> http://validator.w3.org/checklink/ )
> to be a major help in keeping my web pages working properly.
>
>   The reason I'm asking is that I've been unable to get it to work on
> web pages with more than a few (10 or so) links.  It appears to time 
> out
> or something.  I've tried to use it with "Summary only" checked - on
> e.g. http://www.ncsu.edu/it/open_source/chitre.html
>
>   After a few minutes it says "Done" at the bottom of the browser - but
> never shows anything after the "This may take some time ..." line.

The link checker will not time out, but, as you saw in the 
documentation, browsers will tend to "decide they have waited long  
enough" if the link checker does not provide any output during a 
certain lapse of time.

I have just tried processing 
http://www.ncsu.edu/it/open_source/chitre.html with the link checker, 
with success, both in summary and verbose modes).

 From the very well detailed description you gave, I suspect that at the 
time you were trying to use the link checker, there was a long latency 
to check the link to  link 
http://plagiarism.phys.virginia.edu/software.html (repeated tests gave 
me between 2 and 26 seconds for this server to reply, which seems to 
confirm my suspicion), and that made the link checker "extra slow".

We are in the process of experimenting with solutions to this timeout 
issue. In the meantime, if you are a fairly heavy user of the link 
checker, I can suggest to install the link checker and use its 
commandline version, see:
http://validator.w3.org/docs/checklink.html#install

Regards,
-- 
olivier

Received on Friday, 11 March 2005 05:01:49 UTC