LinkScan 4.2: New & Improved Reports & More Flexibility

San Jose, CA, June 17, 1998 - Electronic Software Publishing Corporation (Elsop) today announced major enhancements to it's widely used LinkScan, the fasted and most powerful link checker that operates on servers. Designed to work on both internet and intranet servers, LinkScan can test over 40,000 links per hour because it is uses multi-threaded simultaneous processing. LinkScan also produces two revolutionary types of site maps describe below. LinkScan is the preferred link validator for major websites because it can easily handle more than 250,000 pages at a time.

Elsop has made significant improvements to the LinkScan directory and file structures to support new features and provide greater flexibility when creating complex multi-Project configurations in its version 4.2 release of LinkScan. These enhancements also improve the already unbeatable scalability of LinkScan.

Reporting Enhancements

Elsop has introduced many enhancements to the various reporting modules with new and more consistent options. The new Summary --> Detail Report is now the default selection with options to sort the report (ascending or descending) on the Number of Errors in the document, Document URL, or Document Age. It includes hyperlinks to LinkScan/QuickCheck which may be used to display all of the potential problems with a selected document.

The improved LinkScan/QuickCheck has many new features including Simple and Advanced Options Menus and the ability to configure default options in linkscan.sys. QuickCheck also "remembers" individual user preferences by setting a cookie in the users browser.

Source Code Line Numbers Added to Reports

Elsop has also added Source Code Line Numbers to the LinkScan reports where it is useful in finding and correcting errors in a document.

LinkScan now includes support for Weblint to Validate HTML

In addition, QuickCheck now integrates with Weblint. Weblint performs rigorous HTML syntax checking of the source document. This optional feature may be used to show all of the HTML syntax errors and broken links in a single report together with the HTML source code.

Users may now Customize Menus

The menus for the various LinkScan CGI scripts may be customized by creating the files linkhead.txt and linkfoot.txt in the LinkScan directory. Moreover, when using custom headers and footers with SiteMap and TapMap, LinkScan displays a discrete version stamp and copyright notice.

New Documentation for Content Managers and Developers

The LinkScan documentation has been restructured and supplemented with a new LinkScan User Guide. This new guide is directed at the needs of Content Managers and Developers. The LinkScan Reference Manual is directed at the needs of Systems Administration personnel.

New Start Up Guides for Systems Administrators

Elsop has released two new Start Up Guides. One is directed at users who wish to install LinkScan on Microsoft NT systems. The other guide is designed for those who install LinkScan on Unix systems. LinkScan runs on all popular Unix operating system platforms.

Many other Performance enhancements introduced

Significant performance and accuracy enhancements have been made to the validating FTP links process.

Systems Administrators will be pleased to find that Elsop has added greater flexibility for them when they create and configure multiple Projects.

Elsop added a -quiet option to allow for more succinct progress displays during scanning. LinkScan now also displays a total error count on completion of a scan.

Several minor bugs were fixed and Elsop also incorporated numerous other small changes requested by customers.

LinkScan Customers

LinkScan is being used by such large and diverse organizations as Hewlett-Packard, NEC, Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, the University of Cambridge (UK), the United States Department of Defense, the Vancouver Public Library (Canada), the California Institute of Technology, Australia's Commonwealth Department of the Environment, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwest Airlines, Brown University, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, The MITRE Corporation, the Ford Motor Company, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Walgreens Pharmacy, the Boeing Company, Rueters, Business Week, and Molecular Simulations Inc.

Broken Links: The not so hidden site killers

Elsop's studies show that most websites have major problems. These include up to 30% of the external links being broken along with missing files and orphaned pages. Why? Because it's just too time consuming and difficult to quality assure a large website manually and other programs have been too slow and cumbersome to use.

The Solution to Website Quality Problems: LinkScan 4.2

The solution is to use a powerful automatic link validator to test every link on your website. LinkScan is the answer. It is the most thorough and fastest quality assurance tool available for this task. LinkScan is essential to a professionally managed web site. It's also easy to use because it sets up all directories and permissions and builds your configuration file automatically. Most first time users have LinkScan installed and running in minutes.

Designed to work on both internet and intranet servers, LinkScan can test over 40,000 links per hour because it is the only link checker that uses multi-threaded simultaneous processing. Linkscan has successfully worked on websites with over 250,000 pages and more than 50,000 external links making it the pre-eminent tool for intranets.

SiteMap & TapMap: Display an entire website on a single page

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.

LinkScan is the cure for broken links

The message to Webmasters is: "Don't get caught with broken links." Don't let your visitors think your site is broken down. It reflects on you and your organization. You can now identify and fix those problems today. Free fully functional evaluation copies of LinkScan 4.2 may be downloaded (less than 240 Kbytes) from the company's website at: http://www.elsop.com/linkscan/dleval.cgi

Pricing, Upgrades, and Volume Discounts

LinkScan 4.2 is priced at 750 dollars per server. Version 4.2 is a free upgrade to purchasers of version 4.0 and 4.1. Upgrades from versions earlier than 4.0 may be purchased for 250 dollars. Volume discounts are available in single order quantities of five copies or more. Orders may be placed online via a secure server. Visa, MasterCard, and American Express cards are accepted in addition to payment by check or money order.