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How to: Link Check and Make Coded Links Clickable.
Don't you just hate it when you copy a link and paste it into your browser to check to see if the link is working only to find out that it is indeed dead or say you download several parts only to find out that one part is no longer available.
Well, if this sounds like you I have some good news. I'm going to teach you a simple way to check to see if download links are active or not without having to copy and paste at all. Sounds great huh? Well, let me tell you it sure is great.
Anyways, this will require to install a couple of things. Firefox for one is needed. If you don't feel like installing it on your machine that's fine, but you will need that browser to use some addons to do what is to follow.
You can get a portable version of firefox below.
http://www.fileserve.com/file/hbPg4NG/FirefoxPortable3.5.13_+add-ons.rar
This will allow you to use the browser without having to install it on your machine.
By the way the version of firefox is 3.5.13 and I have also already installed the
add-on and script as well so it's all ready to go.
Note: all that is needed is to update those add-ons to the latest versions.
Now that you have firefox either installed or downloaded the
portable version I have provided now it's time to move on.
Note: I believe Opera can have the add-on and script installed.
Installing the Grease Monkey Add-On
What you now need to do install the greasemonkey add-on for firefox. What this will allow us to do is put scripts that
have been created into it to do certain things. Anyways, you can get the script in the link below.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748/
Page will look like below.
Add it and restart your browser. That's it for that simple enough.
Now we want to get a script that will show if the links are active or not.
Rapidshare Links Checker
This is the script that you will want to install into greasemonkey. There are some other ones that are nice as well but this
is the one that I like to use so It's going to be the one I'll be talking about.
Anyways, to install the script simply go to the link below.
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/9467
You will be presented with a screen as such.
Just click on the Install button and once finished all is well and ready to be used. Simple huh?
Well, you probably have some questions now that you have these things installed
and exactly how it works. Well, I won't leave you hanging that's for sure.
How it Works
Now you may notice on the bottom right of your firefox there is monkey icon. That is your greasemonkey.
If you right click on it, it will bring up the menu for it. In there it will show what scripts have been installed
whether or not greasemonkey is enabled or disabled. The scripts will show by name at the top. If there is
a check next to it, it means that it is enabled.
Now if you left click on the monkey this will disable greasemonkey. Which sometimes is necessary because with it
running on some sites it can mess up some features on the page. If that ever happens, disable greasemonkey
and refresh the page and all should be well.
Now you know those things, how to tell when links are active or not?
Well, go to a page with download links. Once on the page you will have to wait for
the page to fully load to see what the Rapidshare Links Checker Script actually does.
This is how active links will look like.
They will show green with a check-mark in it. If they are temporarily unavailable then there will be a X through it.
This is how non working links will look.
Will show red with a X through it.
So green is all good and ready to download, red is dead or deleted.
Also, notice how the active links are underlined?
Well, this allows you to click on the link and be sent to the page to download. No copy and paste needed. But, if you do not want to leave the page that you are on you will need to right click on the link and select open in a new tab or window. Nice huh!
Now, this script does not work with all file hosters but it works with a good amount of them. Also, some filehosters will show active when they are indeed not. Which pretty much has been fixed with recent updates.
Note: With the new update to version 20110308 filesonic links do now show dead when dead and active when active.
Now since you can not check all file hosters you need something to check the other links. This is when a link checker site comes in handy, but even then it's not always going to cover all the file hosters but usually the ones you can't pickup with the script you can pick up with these.
Here are a couple that are nice and work great.
http://wgtools.com/link-checker/ http://urlchecker.net/
Note: with the portable firefox that I included at the top of the page I
have these two sites bookmarked.
Another thing I want to cover is sometimes you will come across links where the name of the file is shown and if there is a space then the script will not pick up the whole link. Below is an example.
See how only part of the link has been checked and not the whole thing. Well, this is when you would
just copy the links and use the link checker sites as provided.
Check only the file hosters you prefer!
Last but not least I want to show you how to enable file hosters you prefer to check instead of wasting time checking ones you do not use. After you have the add-ons installed go to the bottom right hand of your browser and locate the monkey head. Right click on it and you will be presented with this.
Simply put your cursor over the "User Script Commands" and another box will pop up on the left side. Now simply click on "Configuration" and you will be presented with this window below.
Now just remove the checks from the boxes you do not want to check links for and put check marks in the boxes next to the sites you want to check links to and that's really all there is to it.
Think that covers it. Now you can easily check to see if the links to the filehoster you prefer are indeed active or not. Also if you want to contribute to SnowFortress then you now will be able to help out staff and keep the site clean by reporting the dead links.
Now you will be saving time checking to see if links are indeed active or dead and if you so choose can help staff out by reporting. I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial and find it helpful.
Moose
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