The Most Annoying Yet Most Important Task in Website Management
Post from October 16, 2008 (âť August 27, 2021), filed under Web Development (feed).
This and many other posts are also available as a pretty, well-behaved ebook: On Web Development.
âŚis link checking. There are tools out there, en masse, but itâs annoying to run after professionals who neglect online basics or donât know how to set up redirectsâand with that waste other peopleâs time. [This was a bit harsh.]
Even though I regularly do QA this doesnât mean I myself am always handling this perfectly. Yet whenever I check links, itâs 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, shouldnât be necessary. It shouldnât, and yet itâs so important. (RIP.)
About Me

Iâm Jens, and Iâm an engineering lead and author. Iâve worked as a technical lead for Google, Iâm close to W3C and WHATWG, and I write and review books for OâReilly. 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* Iâm 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 âjust ship itâ and deal with the 1% failures afterwards đ
Note to developers:
CHECK THE 404S IN YOUR LOGS!
Itâll reveal a whole world of mistakes -
On October 16, 2008, 9:28 CEST, Robert said:
sic! đ
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On October 17, 2008, 11:08 CEST, Santhos said:
Yep, thatâs totally true. I always do a double check on old links and redirect them through htaccess after Iâve 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 couldnât 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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