Re: Checker and Netfirms

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson <mailbox@gunnar.cc>]

SandridgeFarm@aol.com wrote:
> 
> << Site validation checker >>
> 
> Hi!
> 
>   I went to the check page and selected:
>  "Check those Ringlink links that are included in the customized
>  HTML code". I then clicked "Check Now" and got "The sites below
> failed the check:" for all 4 Ringlinks in my new "Ringlink Hosts
> Web Ring"? What failed was "- Invalid URL"
> 
> What invalid URL???
> 
> Should I have my Ring home url in the HTML Code as:
> 
> http://www.gunnar.cc/cgi-bin/ringlink/home.pl?ringid=ringlink
> instead of
> http://ringlink.netfirms.com/ringlinkweb.html
No, Pete, you should not. It seems like the checker considers all
Netfirms URLs to be invalid by definition. :)
When you request a URL, the server outputs a response message (not
included in the source code you can see in a browser) besides the HTML
code. The first line of a response message is the status line, which
usually looks like this:
        HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Accordingly, to determine the validity of a URL, Ringlink simply checks
whether the status line includes the string '200'.
However, the status line received when requesting a Netfirms URL is:
        HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
Maybe it has something to do with the banners that Netfirms force onto
the pages, but no matter what the reason is, I'd guess it is some kind
of bad server configuration at Netfirms. Anyway, for obvious reasons I
cannot modify Ringlink so that a page, accompanied by the status line
"404 Not Found", passes the check.
So it seems like Netfirms pages will have to be checked manually
throughout.
/ Gunnar