=head1 README for LinkController 0.033

LinkController is a package which is designed to allow the checking
of links in sophisticated ways.  If you have ever noticed that link
checkers spend more time sending you to sites which just happen to be
down for the day due to maintenance problems than to real broken
links, this should be for you.  

It was written for and helps in the maintenance of the Scottish
Climbing Archive (L<http://scotclimb.org.uk> ) but has deliberately gone a
bit beyond the needs of a normal web page maintenance script.

=head1 WHERE TO START

Get LinkController installed.  The file INSTALL should help.

Read the reference manual (in the docs directory as link-controller.*
or in docs/HTML in HTML format).

Documentation is available online at 
http://scotclimb.org.uk/software/linkcont/link-controller-homepage.html

Try the configuration commands; default-install if you are a system
administrator or configure-link-control if you are not.

Try each of the commands (C<test-link> C<link-report> etc.).  Use the
C<--help> option to the commands to find out how they work.  Use the
C<--not-perfect> option to link-report to get early output.

=head1 FEATURES

=over 4

=item * 

Link checking

Link controller includes tools for extracting links from web pages and
then testing them.

=item * 

rapid link repair

LinkController includes systems for repairing all files which need
repaired based on databases it builds up which.

=item * 

network efficient

LinkController does requests at a very slow (and configurable) rate
over time and B<mostly> uses HEAD requests to verify documents exist.

=item * 

works in network low usage time

under configuration from your own crontab.

=item * 

obeys robot exclusion rules

in configurable ways.

=item * 

has features for intranet usage

Use of authentication tokens.  Fast checking of particular domains.

=item * 

source code included and protected under the GPL

Guaranteed possibility to maintain the software, even if I go bust.  

=back

=head1 HOW IT WORKS

LinkController normally works by checking all of your links to a
database at times triggered from cron (you should choose low usage
times).  After a few days, it will have built up a list of those links
which are really broken and you can then examine them and do what
repairs and changes are needed.  The time delay saves work in
examining links which aren't really broken.

Once you have the database built, you can selectively report problems
with your links across all of your pages and repair broken ones
rapidly, either using LinkControllers direct substitution system, or
by directly opening the page up in your favorite editor (direct Emacs
support is provided).

LinkController includes a system for rapidly changing links through
your HTML pages.  To do this it uses the database that it has already
built up and only edits those files which need to be edited.  This can
save much time if you have many pages to look after.

Link controller is based over the World Wide Web capabilities provided
by LibWWW-Perl and as such should be easy to modify and extend.  It
should also be reliable and safe to use.

=head1 GPL Protection

Link Controller is available under the GNU Public License to protect
your rights as a user of the software.

That the source code is under the GPL means that your right to modify
it is protected and that you can be sure that if you come across a
version of this software in use somewhere, and have to do maintenance
on it, you will at least have access to the source code.  That means
that even if you can't fix it yourself, you can hire someone who can.
The Perl consultants list will be a good place to start (go to
<http://www.perl.org/> ).

Link controller is user supported software, and no warantee is
provided, no support is guaranteed.  Bugs and patches are gratefully
accepted (link-controller@scotclimb.org.uk) no response is guaranteed,
but I'll do my best.

See the file INSTALL included in the distribution for information on
how to install it.

You can download LinkController from 

	http://scotclimb.org.uk/software/linkcont/

in various formats or

	http://www.cpan.org/

via the Perl modules system

=head1 Thanks

Thanks must go to various people and institutions which provided
access or help.

=over 4 

=item *

Esoterica Internet Portugal

=item *

IPPT PAN Institute in Poland and in particular

=item *

Piotr Pogorzelszi there

=item *

The Tardis Project at the University of Edinburgh CS Department

=back

Please see the LinkController user guide included with the
distribution.

=cut



