A script that checks every single external link going out of a website to see if that link goes to a page with the same url or to a 404 redirect page. If the latter then the script will delete the now dead link, or if that's too difficult then at least deactivate the link or if that's too much then at the very least mark the broken link in some way (perhaps make the lettering bold red) so it will be easy to detect when deleteing dead links manually.

Such a script will work on the server side continuously running in the background searching for dead links. And since every website has a different url for their 404 page there has to be a way to add the 404 page urls for the websites to which you link most.


I searched long and hard for such a script and to my knowlege there isn't any avalible that achives all the above. If anyone with the PHP knowledge can make it and release it under the GPL this invaluable script would help a lot of people out , including me

I've seen link directory scripts with this functionality. Download one and pick apart the code.

Just so you know 'continuously running in the background' isn't the way you want to go. Use cron.

If you do end up writing the script (or finding someone to do it for you) this might help you get started:

PHP Code:

<?php
//determine if the page returns a 404
$host = 'example.com';
$is404 = false;
$path = '/index.php';

if($sock = fsockopen($host, 80))
{
     fputs($sock, "HEAD $path HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n");

     $httpResponse = '';

     while(!feof($sock))
          $httpResponse .= fgets($sock);
 
     if(strpos($httpResponse, '404') !== false)
          $is404 = true;
}
?>

Thank you for your reply NullPointer. I don't think I will end up writing the script as I know no PHP whatsoever, but hopefully I can get someone to do it for me. In the meantime can you explain a little as to what the code you wrote is supposed to do?

The code makes a HEAD request to the specified host. Normally the hosts response would be something like 'HTTP/1.0 200 OK'. If the page does not exist, however, the response will be 'HTTP/1.0 404 Requested URL not found'. Once the script recieves the response from the host, it checks for the string '404'. If found the page does not exist.

You can use this thread to ask questions about your topic, but please do not use the php forum to post requests to have your project to be created. We have a marketplace for that type of requests. Thank you.