Diplo LinkChecker for Umbraco

I've been a great fan of the Umbraco Content Management System for many years. It's powerful, flexible, open source and has a great community associated with it. One if its many great features is that it allows developers to contribute packages that extend or enhance Umbraco's functionality. Best of all, thanks to the ethos of open source, the vast majority of these packages are available to download free of charge. I have benefited greatly from some of the great packages so I thought it was time to give a little something back…

Introducing My First Package - Diplo LinkChecker

Many moons ago, whilst playing around with the Umbraco API, I decided to write a link checker for Umbraco. A few days later I'd got a working version that did the job but wasn't particularly user friendly or easy to install. I then got onto other things and forgot about it…

However, the other day I heard a few Umbraco developers discussing how useful such a feature would be to them and their clients. I decided to resurrect the old project, tart-it up and package it for download. It's my way of giving a little something back.

About Diplo LinkChecker

Diplo LinkChecker is a simple HTTP based link checker for Umbraco that installs as a dashboard section within the main Content tab. It has been tested against Umbraco 4.7 and up and is built against the NET 4.0 framework.

Features

• LinkChecker will check both internal and external links
• LinkChecker checks the entire page contents  - not just Rich Text areas
• LinkChecker will also check all page assets, such as the paths to images, included CSS files, JavaScript etc. If it has a path, it will be checked.
• Links within each page are checked asynchronously for speed
• Once a link has been checked it won't be checked again if it occurs elsewhere in the site
• Pages are batched into manageable chunks (by default 5) so that users are not left waiting for ages for the entire site to be checked
• Includes a report with quick links to edit any page found with broken links in it
• Advanced options can be configured via an included  XML .config file

How It Works

LinkChecker works in the following manner:

• It generates a list of every page in your Umbraco site
• These are then broken down into small batches (by default 5 pages)
• The checker then makes an HTTP request to each page in the batch in turn
• It then extracts all the links, images and included assets from the page and makes an HTTP HEAD request to each one asynchronously
• LinkChecker then examines the status code returned by the server to determine whether the link is OK (200), Not Found (404 etc.) or requires a Warning (other status codes)

Screenshots

Where Can I Get It?

You can download the package directly from the Umbraco Package Repository (Deli). It can be easily installed in a few clicks. Please note it has only been properly tested against Umbraco 4.7 - but may work with earlier versions if you have .NET framework 4.0 installed.

License

You are free to download the package and install it on any number of Umbraco sites, including commercial sites.

However, I have no current plans for releasing the source code and assert my right to remain the sole owner of the code. At some point I will be re-developing the package for Umbraco 5 (Jupiter) and at that point I will look into making it properly open source. But currently the code isn't in a state for release!

I also cannot be held responsible for any defects or problems arising out of use of this code. You install and use it at your own risk (though I have no reason to believe it will cause any problems). If you do encounter any problems please report them in the Package forum and not here.