Production Planning, Continued

You've put in countless hours building your site. You're ready to sleep for a month. But along comes the project manager asking tough questions like, "Does everything work?" She wants to make sure that there are no broken links on the site and that it works on all targeted browsers.

"Uh, I think so," is probably not going to cut it with the project manager. So what can you do to test whether things are working? Luckily, there are some useful programs to help you check that your site is functioning as it should. I like two in particular: Linklint (for link checking) and the World Wide Web Consortium's HTML validator.

Linklint
Linklint is a link-checking program written in Perl. It runs on both Windows and Unix platforms, so it doesn't matter which platform your site is hosted on. There are many link-checking solutions out there, but I've found Linklint to be the most powerful. It allows you to check links both locally and remotely, so that even if your site is hosted on a different machine from the one on which you're running Linklint, it will still work. The best part is that Linklint will generate a report that you can view in your web browser, making it easy to find pages with broken links.

Since Linklint is written in Perl, it doesn't have a graphical interface. This can make it difficult to use. If you have a little Unix knowledge, you'll have no problem running the program. If your Unix skills are lacking, I recommend that you spend a little time reading the instructions before jumping in.

HTML Validation
A while back you could get away with using lots of proprietary tags on your site. The folks at Netscape and Microsoft have tried to please site designers by offering them tags to create better, more controlled layouts. The problem with these proprietary tags (tags that tend to work only on one browser) is that they offer no support for other browsers. At best, your layout won't be perfect. At worst, your site may be completely invisible to anyone without the right browser. If you want your site to be seen and used by the largest possible audience, you need to work within HTML standards.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has provided developers with an HTML validation service that checks documents for compliance with HTML standards. It's easy to use and it works amazingly well. You simply add the proper document type definition (DTD) at the top of your HTML files and then enter your site's URL for validation. The validator will generate a report that identifies all invalid HTML and gives you detailed descriptions of what you did wrong. It's an excellent tool for identifying your site's compatibility problems.

You've organized, structured, tested, validated, and corrected your site. Everything works as it should. The client is thrilled and the project manager is amazed that you finished on time. So what's next? Now you can take that month-long nap. Or with the time you saved, you can begin your next project -- on schedule.

Brian Dame is a senior production specialist at THINK New Ideas' Atlanta office. In his spare time he maintains Harold's Machine, a site containing web production tips and tutorials.

W3C HTML Validator
Free HTML validation tool created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

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