“My Website is Broken…and I Look Like A FOOL!” One Cool Free Tool for Keeping Your Web Affairs in Order & Preventing Embarrassment

*yyyyawn*

It’s bright and early one sunny, beautiful Thursday — I even spied a vertical rainbow high in the very dry sky on my way to get breakfast — and I’ve started my day. I’ve just finished doing a precursory troll through Facebook, and having quickly updated my status with this morning’s witty new quip, it’s time to get to work. I check my email, and…

Whoops.

To my extreme horror, there are 15 new 404 errors on my primary business website. Fifteen!

EPIC FAIL.

I open the notices and see that someone trying to access my portfolio last night at 8:46PM instead accessed what turned out to be an unsavory gobbledygook of missing image links, error nags … and even worse, a resulting mishmash of puzzlement, aggravation … and quite likely disgust as they hastily fled the scene.

(Did I say, “epic fail”…? Okay. Just checking.)

Speaking of “-ail” words, the free tool that helped save my “tail” was Xenu’s Link Sleuth (for Windows). It’s a VERY lightweight gem of a software that allows you to crawl your entire website to ensure that there are no profit-killing broken links (internal, and external if you choose) — and resulting embarrassment — on your website.

Download it! Please! I’ve been using it now for almost a decade, and it hasn’t failed me once.

However, that was only the second tool of … well … two that saved my virtual butt. The 404 errors could’ve (and likely would have) gone on for days, weeks, or months ’til some kindly visitor took pity on me and made the extra effort to write. (And who actually takes the time to inform others that their website is malfunctioning these days? Eh, they just leave and decide not to be bothered.)

Anyhoo, instead of relying solely on prospects to help me out, I PROACTIVELY set up my offense — the 404 Alerter ! This trusty free tool is what brought that unattractive melee of 404s to my emailed attention in the first place. Then just 15 minutes later, after a tad of diagnostics, troubleshooting, and the reuploading of one simple file to my Web server, all was again right with the world.

:oD

I’ve been using that 404 Alerter for numerous years, too. You install it to your server (well, Unix, Linux, or Mac), set your alerts to provide as little or as much detail as you want about the error, and it will email you immediately when visitors (or bots) encounter missing pages, images, or other files on your domain. (You can also turn email alerts off and just log in daily to check for errors, but honestly … why in the heck would you do that!?)

Anyhow … just get the tools already!

• Xenu’s Link Sleuth (for Windows users)
• 404 Alerter (for Unix/Linux/Mac)

They sure saved my butt this morning.

Alright … now back to work. ;)

 Respected Business & Marketing author H.T. Major has nearly a decade of collective experience fine-tuning the art of creating effective, efficient business websites that SELL, and boosting the conversion of existing sites. Now she offers supremely affordable website, photo, & business design services that are not only about creating "pretty pictures", but about creating RESULTS: visit ChumpChangeWebDesign.com.