LinkScan 7.0 includes LinkScan Enterprise & Enhancements
San Jose, CA, March 8, 2000. Electronic Software Publishing Corporation (Elsop) is pleased to announce the release of LinkScan Enterprise.With the introduction of LinkScan Enterprise, Elsop now offers a solution for every level of an organization from individual webmaster to development team to mutilple teams of developers and content managers. Elsop's family of three quality assurance products: LinkScan Workstation, LinkScan Server, and LinkScan Enterprise provide a seamless growth path that is offered with complete compatibility between the different products. This is important to large organizations because their training and support requirements are the same for all three products. All LinkScan products can now scan remote as well as local computer systems via HTTP and/or file system.
The LinkScan products are the industrial strength link checking and website management tools for all Linux, Unix and Windows operating systems. They are the most accurate, fastest and most scalable products available and they are highly customizable. They also do HTML validation. All LinkScan products create two types of publication quality SiteMaps and they are professionally supported. Reports may be viewed using all industry standard browsers.
- LinkScan Workstation is a single-user
implementation designed for individual content developers in large
enterprises, and for organizations having smaller websites with up to
500 documents. It will check an unlimited number of external links.
LinkScan Workstation enables smaller organizations
and departments to take advantage of the proven LinkScan technology
at the very affordable price of $300.
- LinkScan Server is the complete multi-user team product
and it includes LinkScan/Dispatch. LinkScan Server is already widely
used by organizations with large websites. The size of the website that
may be analyzed may be up to 5,000 web pages and have an unlimited number
of external links. Reports may be viewed with web browsers and/or
distributed via e-mail. This multi-user product is priced at only $1,000.
- LinkScan Enterprise is the multi-team product and it will scan an unlimited number of web pages and links on up to ten (10) physical computers that are owned or leased by you at one Location. Enterprise includes Dispatch. Up to over 100 computers may be scanned by a single LinkScan Enterprise by licensing additional capability. This is the ideal solution with many teams of developers using numerous computers to build large internet and intranet sites. Reports may be viewed with web browsers and/or distributed via e-mail. This multi-team product is priced at only $5,000.
New Enhancements
Elsop is also pleased to introduce a number of other enhancements to the LinkScan family of products with version 7.0:- Javascripts - We have enhanced LinkScan with support for JavaScript.
Links may be extracted from JavaScript code using
(customizable) pattern matching techniques.
- Forms - Users now can test specific forms with specified
data values. Forms may be submitted using either the GET
or POST methods.
- E-mail Address Verification - We now include our MailVet technology that
can verify with a high degree of accuracy that an e-mail address will or will not bounce mail when it is sent
from "mailto" tags.
MailVet does this without sending mail. This is not just a syntax checker. LinkScan will
verify up to 500 "mailto" tags. There is a MailVet demo at:
http://www.elsop.com/quick/mailvet.cgi - META tag owners - We have provided additional controls to specify document ownership.
In particular, owner names may be extracted from document META tags and subsequently manipulated via Regular
Expressions.
- Specify unlinked pages - We have added the capability to specify additional URL's
that must be scanned, whether or not LinkScan encounters
links to those URL's in other documents.
- ldap://... Links - We have added limited support for ldap://... links. LinkScan
will attempt to establish a connection to Port 389 of the
specified server. It does not currently validate the query
and the status will be reported as an Advisory; "LDAP Server
Connected - Query Not Checked".
- Secure Server Support - We have added additional support for SSL (https://) secure
server proxies. See Proxy Servers.
- Enhanced Regular Expressions - We have provided powerful facilities to manipulate specific links via Regular Expressions. This feature may, for example, be used to remove or manipulate SESSIONID's that are added dynamically by your HTTP server. It can also be helpful in controlling test conditions for sites that use mainly dynamic content.
Summary of Capabilities and Differences in LinkScan Products
| Features | LinkScan WorkStation |
LinkScan Server |
LinkScan Enterprise |
| User | Individual | Team | Multiple Teams |
| Number of External URLs (Links) | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Number of Web Pages | < 500 | < 5,000 | Unlimited |
| Number of Computers Scanned | One | One | Ten * |
| Scan Computer Via Remote or Local File System and/or HTTP |
Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Dynamic Report Generator | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Reports Distributed via E-mail | No | Yes | Yes |
| Includes SiteMap & TapMap | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Platforms - Runs on All Linux, Windows and Unix O/S's |
Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Price | $300.00 | $1,000.00 | $5,000.00 |
LinkScan checks websites through either the file system or the web server. Both processes are necessary. The file system process is ten times faster than the server process and it enables LinkScan to identify orphan files. Checking links through the web server enables LinkScan to check active elements such as CGI's, image maps, external links and Server Side Includes. Having both capabilities also enables the user to mirror their production server on either their workstation and/or a development server.
LinkScan is being used by such large and diverse organizations as Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, NEC, Silicon Graphics, the University of Cambridge (UK), the United States Department of Defense, Goethe Institut, the California Institute of Technology, StorageTek, HBO, Shell Canada, Australia's Commonwealth Department of the Environment, Rueters, iafrica.com, Computer Associates, Candle Corp., the US National Security Agency, 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, Business Week, the Swedish EPA, Molecular Simulations Inc., 3Com Corporation, the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Ericsson, Finnish National Gallery, KPMG and the White House.
LinkScan operates on all Unix Systems (including AIX, BSDI, FreeBSD, Digital Unix, HP/UX, IRIX, Linux, and SunOS/Solaris flavors), Linux and all Windows (95/98/NT/2000) platforms with Perl 5. Free fully functional evaluation copies of LinkScan 6.2 may be downloaded from the company's website at: http://www.elsop.com/
LinkScan Workstation 6.1 or earlier may be upgraded to LinkScan Workstation 7.0 for free.
LinkScan versions 1.x, 2.x and 3.x may be upgraded to LinkScan Server 7.0 for a fee of $500.00 per copy.
LinkScan Workstation 7.0 or earlier may be upgraded to LinkScan Server for a fee of $800.00 per copy.
LinkScan Server 4.x, 5.x and 6.x may be upgraded to LinkScan Server 7.0 for a fee of $250 per copy.LinkScan Server 7.0 or earlier may be upgraded to LinkScan Enterprise for a fee of $4,000.00.