The Most Annoying Yet Most Important Task in Website Management
Post from October 16, 2008 (ā» August 27, 2021), filed under Web Development.
This and many other posts are also available as a pretty, well-behaved ebook: On Web Development.
ā¦is link checking. There are tools out there, en masse, but itās annoying to run after professionals who neglect online basics or donāt know how to set up redirectsāand with that waste other peopleās time. [This was a bit harsh.]
Even though I regularly do QA this doesnāt mean I myself am always handling this perfectly. Yet whenever I check links, itās striking to me to see so many people change URLs without thinking. And I wonder, sometimes with a goal of sending people away? Link checking is not a fun job, and, in an ideal world, shouldnāt be necessary. It shouldnāt, and yet itās so important. (RIP.)
About Me

Iām Jens Oliver Meiert, and Iām an engineering manager and author. Iāve worked as a technical lead for Google, Iām close to the W3C and the WHATWG, and I write and review books for OāReilly. Other than that, I love trying things, sometimes including philosophy, art, and adventure. Here on meiert.com I share some of my views and experiences.
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Comments (Closed)
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On October 16, 2008, 8:50 CEST, Kroc Camen said:
Urgh, *raises hand* Iām totally bad at doing this. Just yesterday I found at that the URLs for enclosures in my RSS feed were wrong, and had been for weeks.
As an individual doing a personal project, I tend to just polish, polish and polish until I get to 99% and then ājust ship itā and deal with the 1% failures afterwards š
Note to developers:
CHECK THE 404S IN YOUR LOGS!
Itāll reveal a whole world of mistakes -
On October 16, 2008, 9:28 CEST, Robert said:
sic! š
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On October 17, 2008, 11:08 CEST, Santhos said:
Yep, thatās totally true. I always do a double check on old links and redirect them through htaccess after Iāve made changes to site structures.
It can spare you lots of trouble and frustrated visitors (who might not come back again).
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On November 11, 2008, 6:00 CET, Ann Arbor Web Designer said:
I couldnāt agree more with you. Its a tedious process but it pays rich dividends.
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On April 16, 2009, 5:08 CEST, hari said:
yap! I am agree with ann. That process was still needed
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Perhaps my most comprehensive book: The Web Development Glossary (2020). With explanations and definitions for literally thousands of terms from Web Development and related fields, building on Wikipedia as well as the MDN Web Docs. Available at Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play Books, and Leanpub.