+
+
Q: LinkChecker produced an error, but my web page is ok with
+Netscape/IE/Opera/...
+Is this a bug in LinkChecker?
+
A: Please check your web pages first. Are they really ok? Use
+a syntax highlighting editor. Use HTML Tidy.
+Check if you are using a proxy which produces the error.
+
Q: I still get an error, but the page is definitely ok.
+
A: Some servers deny access of automated tools (also called robots)
+like LinkChecker. This is not a bug in LinkChecker but rather a
+policy by the webmaster running the website you are checking.
+It might even be possible for a website to send robots different
+web pages than normal browsers.
+
Q: How can I tell LinkChecker which proxy to use?
+
A: LinkChecker works transparently with proxies. In a Unix or Windows
+environment, set the http_proxy, https_proxy, ftp_proxy or gopher_proxy
+environment variables to a URL that identifies the proxy server before
+starting LinkChecker. For example
+
+$ http_proxy="http://www.someproxy.com:3128"
+$ export http_proxy
+
+
In a Macintosh environment, LinkChecker will retrieve proxy information
+from Internet Config.
+
Q: The link "mailto:john@company.com?subject=Hello John" is reported
+as an error.
+
A: You have to quote special characters (e.g. spaces) in the subject field.
+The correct link should be "mailto:...?subject=Hello%20John"
+Unfortunately browsers like IE and Netscape do not enforce this.
+
Q: Has LinkChecker JavaScript support?
+
A: No, it never will. If your page is not working without JS then your
+web design is broken.
+Use PHP or Zope or ASP for dynamic content, and use JavaScript just as
+an addon for your web pages.
+
Q: I don't get this --extern/--intern stuff.
+
A: When it comes to checking there are three types of URLs. Note
+that local files are also represented als URLs (ie file://). So
+local files can be external URLs.
+
+- strict external URLs:
+We do only syntax checking. Internal URLs are never strict.
+- external URLs:
+Like 1), but we additionally check if they are valid by connect()ing
+to them
+- internal URLs:
+Like 2), but we additionally check if they are HTML pages and if so,
+we descend recursively into this link and check all the links in the
+HTML content.
+The --recursion-level option restricts the number of such recursive
+descends.
+
+
LinkChecker provides four options which affect URLs to fall in one
+of those three categories: --intern, --extern, --extern-strict-all and
+--denyallow.
+By default all URLs are internal. With --extern you specify what URLs
+are external. With --intern you specify what URLs are internal.
+Now imagine you have both --extern and --intern. What happens
+when an URL matches both patterns? Or when it matches none? In this
+situation the --denyallow option specifies the order in which we match
+the URL. By default it is internal/external, with --denyallow the order is
+external/internal. Either way, the first match counts, and if none matches,
+the last checked category is the category for the URL.
+Finally, with --extern-strict-all all external URLs are strict.
+
Oh, and just to boggle your mind: you can have more than one external
+regular expression in a config file and for each of those expressions
+you can specify if those matched external URLs should be strict or not.
+
An example. We don't want to check mailto urls. Then its
+-i'!^mailto:'. The '!' negates an expression. With --extern-strictall,
+we don't even connect to any mail hosts.
+
Another example. We check our site www.mycompany.com, don't recurse
+into external links point outside from our site and want to ignore links
+to hollowood.com and hullabulla.com completely.
+This can only be done with a configuration entry like
+
+[filtering]
+extern1=hollowood.com 1
+extern2=hullabulla.com 1
+# the 1 means strict external ie don't even connect
+
+
and the command
+linkchecker --intern=www.mycompany.com www.mycompany.com
+
Q: Is LinkCheckers cookie feature insecure?
+
A: Cookies can not store more information as is in the HTTP request itself,
+so you are not giving away any more system information.
+After storing however, the cookies are sent out to the server on request.
+Not to every server, but only to the one who the cookie originated from!
+This could be used to "track" subsequent requests to this server,
+and this is what some people annoys (including me).
+Cookies are only stored in memory. After LinkChecker finishes, they
+are lost. So the tracking is restricted to the checking time.
+The cookie feature is disabled as default.
+
Q: I want to have my own logging class. How can I use it in LinkChecker?
+
A: Currently, only a Python API lets you define new logging classes.
+Define your own logging class as a subclass of StandardLogger or any other
+logging class in the log module.
+Then call the addLogger function in Config.Configuration to register
+your new Logger.
+After this append a new Logging instance to the fileoutput.
+
+import linkcheck, MyLogger
+log_format = 'mylog'
+log_args = {'fileoutput': log_format, 'filename': 'foo.txt'}
+cfg = linkcheck.configuration.Configuration()
+cfg.logger_add(log_format, MyLogger.MyLogger)
+cfg['fileoutput'].append(cfg.logger_new(log_format, log_args))
+
+
Q: LinkChecker does not ignore anchor references on caching.
+
Q: Some links with anchors are getting checked twice.
+
A: This is not a bug.
+It is common practice to believe that if an URL ABC#anchor1 works then
+ABC#anchor2 works too. That is not specified anywhere and I have seen
+server-side scripts that fail on some anchors and not on others.
+This is the reason for always checking URLs with different anchors.
+If you really want to disable this, use the --no-anchor-caching
+option.
+
Q: I see LinkChecker gets a /robots.txt file for every site it
+checks. What is that about?
+
A: LinkChecker follows the robots.txt exclusion standard. To avoid
+misuse of LinkChecker, you cannot turn this feature off.
+See the Web Robot pages and the Spidering report for more info.
+
Q: Ctrl-C does not stop LinkChecker immediately. Why is that so?
+
A: The Python interpreter has to wait for all threads to finish, and
+this means waiting for all open sockets to close. The default timeout
+for sockets is 30 seconds, hence the delay.
+You can change the default socket timeout with the --timeout option.
+
Q: How do I print unreachable/dead documents of my website with
+LinkChecker?
+
A: No can do. This would require file system access to your web
+repository and access to your web server configuration.
+
You can instead store the linkchecker results in a database
+and look for missing files.
+
Q: How do I check HTML/XML syntax with LinkChecker?
+
A: No can do. Use the HTML Tidy program.
+
