[Pro] Simple Question About Links and Refresh

Freeway
1

Hi Folks –

Two quick questions:

  1. I have an old page on the site that I’m going to delete. I’d like to find out what other pages on the site link to the page I’m going to delete so I can update the links. How do I do that? (For reasons I won’t get into, my normal 404 re-direct feature isn’t working with the hosting company.)

  2. On another note, people sometimes visit my site and see old pages that are cached in their browser. I have to tell them to hit the refresh button in order to get the new page, but is there a recommended setting to make that happen automatically so that I don’t have to tell them to hit the refresh button?

Thanks!

– Jamie

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2

On Jun 9, 2014, at 8:58 AM, Jamie Turner wrote:

Hi Folks –

Two quick questions:

  1. I have an old page on the site that I’m going to delete. I’d like to find out what other pages on the site link to the page I’m going to delete so I can update the links. How do I do that? (For reasons I won’t get into, my normal 404 re-direct feature isn’t working with the hosting company.)

If you save your document (so you have a good backup point) then delete that page, Freeway will prompt you to update the links automatically. The options that it gives you are to remove the links, or to replace them with static URLs. So once you have done the latter, it is easy to find them by looking in the Edit URLs dialog. You can then replace those URLs (to the now-missing page) with links to a live page, or to another static URL of your choosing.

  1. On another note, people sometimes visit my site and see old pages that are cached in their browser. I have to tell them to hit the refresh button in order to get the new page, but is there a recommended setting to make that happen automatically so that I don’t have to tell them to hit the refresh button?

Usually, this only happens to your client (who is hopefully train-able) or to you. Most users of any normal static site won’t see this, simply because they don’t actually visit often enough to make their cache long-lived enough for this to matter.

If you have a news page, or something else that is so au courant that you must have the absolute latest, then one good trick is to add a querystring to the URL with JavaScript or similar (see below).

You may also try changing the file-type extension of the page from .html to .php, so the server processes it as if it had data in it – not sure if the last one will actually work, but it might be a good thing to try. Note that this will break any bookmarks, unless the page is the index page and people haven’t bookmarked it exactly by full URL, but rather just the folder name.

<script type="text/javascript">
if(undefined === window.location.search){
	window.location.href = window.location.href + '?t=" + new Date().getTime();
}
</script>

That’s a heavy-handed solution to a problem that might not be as wide-spread as you imagine.

Walter

Thanks!

– Jamie

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As always, thanks for your guidance, Walt. You’ve answered my questions. You’re a true pro.

Cheers,
Jamie

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4

I’d like to find out what other pages on the site link to the page I’m going to delete so I can update the links.

Also note that when you are on any page in the FW doc you can use the Link Map Tab (next to the Preview Tab) to show links in and out of that page.

David

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5

Thanks, Dave! You and Walt are always such a huge help.

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