06 August 2011

Redirect links, please!

It really annoys me (and apologies if I haves blogged about this before) when links on sites prove to be dead.  It is so easy to enter the bit of code on the original page to automatically direct the browser to the correct location.  It is even more annoying when the organization knows this is going to happen and still does nothing about it.  This has just happened to me with the Which? consumer information site: one page contains a link to another but, instead of being transferred to the new location, up pops a different page telling me to go to the home page or do a search!  It's their site, dammit, why must the user do the work?  Essentially, it's down to idle Webmasters who don't want the bother and decide that the user (or customer in some cases) should have the bother instead.  I shall be mailing them about this as soon as I've vented my frustration here!

3 comments:

  1. Some of my students think that if a link is dead there is nothing to be found. With more link-rot experience, I know this isn't the case (always) but never can be certain without performing yet another search. It is more than frustrating, it is an unintended barrier to discovery.

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  2. I totally agree with you as to how lazy some organizations are getting with keeping their links updated. When you say, "It is so easy to enter the bit of code on the original page to automatically direct the browser to the correct location." do you mean simply editing the HTML "code" to refer to the new location, or do you mean some JavaScript that finds and redirects to the new location. If the latter, I would love to know how that is done.

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  3. I was thinking of simply editing the original page containing the link. However, it is possible simply to use the "Refresh" instruction at the original page location (i.e., the url at which the linked page originally resided) - details here: http://www.instant-web-site-tools.com/html-redirect.html

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