Exercise 13: Customizing Linkbot's Analysis

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Linkbot's advanced options allow you to customize the analysis to your individual needs. In this exercise we'll show you how to limit the search depth, filter out URLs and change the speed of the run. For information on all Linkbot's options, check the on-line help.

Changing the search depth

By default, Linkbot will scan your entire site and check the links between each URL. For external URLs, Linkbot will only check that link from your site is functioning, it will not branch onto another site and check its links as well. Linkbot will only branch further on URLs with the same base address (e.g. http://tetranetsoftware.com/) as the one you entered to start the analysis.

To limit the depth of the search you can select the option "check current domain to a depth of". Enter a value here from one to five. For example, if you set the depth to one, Linkbot will only check the links in the first page of your site. If you set the depth to two, Linkbot will check the first page and all links in the pages referenced by the first page.

To prevent Linkbot from checking external links, uncheck the "check external links" option.

Filtering URLs from the analysis

Linkbot's filters allow you to filter out file, directories or even entire protocols from the analysis.

In the example above, the following URLs would be filtered:

All FTP URLs
All URL in the director http://tetranetsoftware.com/download/
The single URL http://tetrnaetsoftware.com/filter.htm

Modifying the analysis speed

Linkbot's high performance multi-tasking engine allow it to check your site at speeds reaching 1200 URLs/min. The actual analysis speed is controlled by five factors:

Speed and memory for your PC:
Speed of your Internet connection
Response time of your Web server
The number of parallel connections setting
The time-out setting

Number of simultaneous connections
In the Connections tab of the Options window you will find a setting for “number of simultaneous connections”. Here you can specify how many URLs that Linkbot should check at the same time. The default value is 10. You may set this number between 1 and 20. Setting this value higher will make the run progress faster but it will also consume more of your PC’s resources and also increase the stress on your Web server.

With a dial-up connection it is unlikely that Linkbot will degrade your Web server’s performance significantly. However, with a direct Internet connection, a high performance PC and slow Web server, your users may experience some decrease in response time from the Web server while Linkbot is running. Use caution in these circumstances.

The time-out setting
By default, Linkbot will time-out after 1 minute of waiting for the server to respond. You may change the default time-out but it must be between 1 and 60 seconds. Setting this value lower will speed up your run times.

For more information on the other options available, please check the on-line help.

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