Marco Beierer

Thank you for your reply.

I may improve the description of this section in one of the next versions to make this clearer.

Let me know if you have further questions or something does not work.

Best regards,
Marco

Normally the affected pages are shown in the results table.

Or do you just think you got these errors because they are shown in the “custom status codes” section? If so, it may be a misunderstanding, because this section is just for documentation and should help with the interpretation of the results. It does not mean that you are affected by these errors.

Have you already started the Link Checker once?

Hi Aamer

Thank you for using the Link Checker.

The “blocked by robots” error means that the Link Checker is blocked in your robots.txt file. This file is normally placed in the root directory of your site. If you have never heard about the robots.txt, you could have a look at the Wikipedia article.

To solve the issue, you could allow the Link Checker to visit all pages by adding the following two lines at the end of your robots.txt. Just make sure that an empty line is between these lines and the current last line.

User-agent: MB-LinkChecker
Disallow:

For the “HTML parse error” I would need to have a closer look. Could you send me the link to the affected page?

Best regards,
Marco

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by Marco Beierer.
• This reply was modified 8 years ago by Marco Beierer.

Hi,

The description should be very clear about the free and paid features. The difference is described in the sections “Additional Technical Features of the Professional Version”, “Is the service free of charge?” and “Limitations”. Please let me know if you have read this and something was not clear or some information was hidden. Then I will add this additional information to the description.

For an average website, the plugin is normally free as the basic features cover the needs of most websites. You just have to pay if you need more.

Best regards,
Marco

Hi Imran,

Thank you for your review.

Have you read the description of the Sitemap Generator? There are multiple sections that describe what is free and what not. Namely Additional Technical Features of the Professional Version, Is the service free of charge? and Limitations.

Please let me know if the explanation is not clear enough to make an educated decision before installing the plugin. If this is the case, I will clarify the description.

Otherwise I can not understand why paid features are a reason for such a bad one star rating. The operation and development of the plugin is not free. Because the plugin uses remote servers to do the actual work, I have to pay and maintain multiple servers.

Best regards,
Marco

Hi Paul,

Thank you for trying the Sitemap Generator.

This issue is most probably caused by an outdated cURL or OpenSSL version. Both libraries need to support SNI. cURL supports SNI from version 7.18.1 (published 2008) and OpenSSL from version 0.9.8f (published 2007) or later.

If you are using PHP 5.3 or earlier, the issue could most probably be fixed by upgrading to a more recent PHP version. But be aware that this could have side effects if a plugin is not compatible with newer PHP versions. However plugins that are still maintained should be compatible with current PHP versions.

If you are using an up to date PHP version, it could be that PHP is compiled against outdated versions of cURL or OpenSSL. In this case, may you check which versions of these libraries you are using? You may could do this in your hosters control panel. If not, phpinfo() would output the versions. Let me know if you need help with this. Normally such old versions of these libraries are not used on purpose and the hoster would fix this, if he knows about it.

Best regards,
Marco

Hi Tom,

Thank you for your review.

I will implement a function to save and load the results in one of the next versions.

The scheduler is one of the main features of the paid version and will thus not be available in the free version in the foreseeable future. Operating the server to execute the link checks costs some money and so it is necessary that the paid version is attractive and thus has more features.

Best regards,
Marco

Mmh, there is theoretically not much that could go wrong technically.

Have you maybe clicked once on the button after you have returned to the Sitemap Generator and clicked again within one or two seconds because nothing has happend? If the Sitemap Generator has finished in the meantime the download would start immediately after the first click on the button and during the downloads no visual feedback is given. And if you would click again during the sitemap is downloaded, the sitemap is thrown away and the Sitemap Generator starts over.

Or alternatively have you used a double click on the button to resume the Sitemap Generator? This could lead to the same behavior.

Best regards,
Marco

Hi Tom,

Thank you for your review and feedback. I really appreciate it.

Are you sure that resuming does not work? There is currently no auto resume function, but if you switch to another page in the admin area the generation of the sitemap goes further in the background and if you go back and click the “Generate your sitemap” button, it should download the sitemap if the generation has already finished and otherwise you get feedback about the current state.

The usability of this is not optimal, but it normally should work. Or have you used the Sitemap Generator on my website at the same time? If so, that could have caused the issue, because the plugin and the tool on my website use the same backend.

That the “Show the sitemap” button just downloads a copy is true. I will change this in one of the next versions, so that the actual sitemap is linked. I have already changed this in the Joomla version of this plugin, but not yet in the WordPress version.

Best regards,
Marco

Hi Julie, thank you for your reply. That means that 480 links were successfully checked.

With this knowledge in mind, is the plugin for you more worth than one star? If so, may you think about adjusting your rating?

Best regards,
Marco

An additional note:

You could also see how many internal and external links were checked in the stats after the scan. The LinkedIn link is just counted once in the stats, even if it is shown as broken link for every page.

Hi jkrafty,

Thank you for your nice review. I’m glad that you like the Link Checker and it helps you to maintain your site.

Best regards,
Marco

Hi Julie,

The status code 999 is an internal status code of LinkedIn. LinkedIn doesn’t allow automated crawlers to access to site and just returns this status code.

There is nothing I could legally do about it and I think nearly all automated link checkers would report the same error.

I’m going to add an option to manually ignore false positives in a future version of the Link Checker to solve such issues and make the results more readable.

All other links of your site were checked if the Link Checker has successfully finished and this means that you have no further broken links.

Best regards,
Marco

Hi Penny,

Thank you for your review and your help in finding the bug. I’m glad that the Link Checker works for you again now.

Best regards,
Marco

Hi Penny,

Thank you for testing the Link Checker again. I’m glad that works now.

If you like to also check the images on your site, please feel free to contact me by email for a free token for the professional version as a little reward for your help and endurance.

You could then also use the scheduler for automatic daily checks.

Best regards,
Marco