LinkScan Press Release

Editorial Contact:
Ken Churilla
[email protected]

Electronic Software Publishing Corp. Introduces LinkScan

LinkScan is the best way to check for broken links on websites

Gardnerville, NV - January 22, 1997 - Electronic Software Publishing Corporation (Elsop) today announced LinkScan, the first and only commercially available link checker that operates on UNIX servers. Designed to work on both internet and intranet servers, LinkScan can test over 30,000 links per hour because it is the only link checker that uses multi-threaded simultaneous processing. LinkScan also produces two revolutionary types of maps of websites. LinkScan's SiteMap enables the user to produce a site map that includes every link on a website arranged in a hierarchical format that resembles a book's table of contents. LinkScan's TapMap is an expandable and collapsible site map that allows viewers to tap down through the various and multiple levels of a website to quickly and easily navigate and explore the website by tapping on a few control icons.

Elsop's LinkScan reports and SiteMaps may be viewed using any of the standard Web browsers such as Netscape Navigator 1.2 and up, and Microsoft Internet Explorer on any platform including Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Macintosh, and, of course, UNIX. LinkScan can be used by virtually anyone because it is designed to run on industry standard UNIX and Microsoft Windows NT web servers.

"The dynamic nature of the World Wide Web means that hyperlinks can become outdated rapidly as sites relocate to different servers and, as structure and content are updated. Experience has shown that as many as 20 percent of hyperlinks can become outdated in just a few months. Even maintaining the integrity of the links within a given site can be a problem, especially if more than one person is involved in updating the pages, " said Kenneth Churilla, president and co-founder of Electronic Software Publishing.

"We developed this product because we could not locate a link checker that could test all of the links on a large website containing over 5,000 external links. We tested every single product in the marketplace and found that they all failed long before completing the task. Most were so slow that it would take days to complete the task if they hadn't failed before hand. Many of the products simply hung up on certain links and the jobs had to be aborted. None of the products had a restart capability so the job would have to be re-run from scratch. All of them operated from the client so they also tied up an internet connection for very long times. LinkScan solves all those problems," continued Churilla.

"Webmasters concerned with the quality of their site should revalidate all hyperlinks on a regular basis; at least weekly and whenever changes are made to content. Manual testing of that intensity is essential to maintain quality, but prohibitively time consuming and expensive. LinkScan solves the problem by automating the task," explained Malcolm Hoar, chairman and co-founder of the company.

Within a web site, LinkScan offers the following features:

  • Scans for missing HTML documents, images and other files
  • Validates all internal hyperlinks
  • Checks all name tags and references
  • Creates two types of site maps or table of contents suitable for publication
  • Discovers orphaned files

    More importantly, LinkScan will probe each one of your external hyperlinks to other web sites. Scanning these links on a regular basis is essential because you do not have any control over those remote sites. LinkScan detects many different errors most of which will appear as "broken links" and frustrate your visitors. These conditions include:

  • Servers that are not found (no DNS entry)
  • Documents that are not found
  • URL's that have relocated
  • URL's that cannot be accessed (e.g. unauthorized or forbidden)
  • URL's that time out

    A unique combination of features have been designed into LinkScan making it the most comprehensive and powerful tool of its kind. These include:

  • Multi-threaded simultaneous processing can check over 30 links concurrently
  • Benchmarked at over 30,000 links checked per hour
  • Can easily check websites with over 10,000 external and/or internal links
  • Multi-site manager for mutiple sites or sub-sites on a single server
  • Restart facilities to recover from system incidents during testing
  • Features for retesting only the "problem" links for managed maintenance
  • Test only internal links or all links at your option
  • Smart Probing of remote links for ultra-high accuracy
  • Facilities to maintain the history of each tested URL
  • Preventative maintenance now possible through reports on redirected links
  • Comprehensive reporting via a forms-based web browser
  • Reports including links to the target and source documents to aid follow-up
  • Reports that focus on specific problems for faster repair of critical items
  • Support for web access via a Proxy Server
  • Creation of SiteMaps for your entire websites and/or sub-directories
  • Customization features for designing your SiteMap to best display your site
  • The SiteMap is a display that looks like the table of contents of a book
  • The SiteMap also highlights new pages added within a defined period
  • Scheduled periodic overnite processing for regular site maintenance
  • Ad hoc custom reports created on the fly from your browser
  • Small setup file (around 80K bytes) takes only seconds to download
  • Free 15 day evaluation for your test drive
  • Easy installation and operation
  • Complete documentation and a comprehensive FAQ
  • Designed for the professional webmaster of intranet and internet websites

    About Electronic Software Publishing Corporation

    Founded in January, 1997, privately-held Electronic Software Publishing Corporation is based in Gardnerville, Nevada. Elsop's mission is to provide the most advanced high-quality software for quality assurance and management of internet/intranet websites. Electronic Software Publishing Corporation (Elsop) is a distributor of software products over the world wide web via Electronic Software Distribution. Elsop will be offering software products developed by other independent third party software developers. Elsop provides free demonstration software, secure order taking, and fulfillment of software orders automatically entirely on the world wide web. LinkScan is available only through the company's website.