Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2005 7:50 pm Post subject: Dreamweaver link problems
I'm hoping that sombody here can help with my problem.
I am having trouble with a couple of my links within my site. I will save the link on a page named "topic" for example. this link will lead to the "what-is-a-topic" page. Now everything saves and works fine for a little while but will soon stop working, it eventually gives a "404 eror page" in the site. When I check my links, it has changed from "what-is-a-topic" to just "topic" which doesn't even exist so the page can't be pulled. How can I fix this problem?
I hope I explained it ok, I don't have a clue on how to fix this, especially since it only happens to a couple of pages periodically.
Please help if you can.
Thank you _________________ Renewable Power Solutions Your Source For Understanding The World Of Alternative Power!
Ebook Builder 101 Your online guide to writing and promoting Ebooks.
I?m not sure what the problem could be. At first I thought it was a code rewriting issue (I got a couple of those), but Dreamweaver doesn?t change links like that. Maybe you?ve been playing with the scroll button immediately after creating a link? If so, be careful. You can change a link to point to something else without even noticing.
Have you first defined a site? If you?re just building pages and save them in a folder, when you create links Dreamweaver could save the urls of the files relative to the hard drive root and not to the other file you are linking. For instance, if you have page1 and page2 in the same folder, page 1 linking to page2, Dream could use ?c:/documents and settings/user/youwebfolder/page2.htm? as link instead of just ?page2.htm? While on your computer that link would work flawlessly, when you upload to your server, the browser won?t recognize it. You mentioned you get a 404 error, so I suppose the link doesn?t work only on the server. So, define a website in dreamweaver before building any page (use site>manage sites>new command). That seems to be the most plausible explanation to me.
If you use a different ftp manager, consider switching to the one dreamweaver as built in. If you configure it correctly, you will have fewer changes of messing something in the upload process.
If that doesn?t solve the problem, well? make sure you upload al files involved, in your example, both ?topic? and "what-is-a-topic", and keep the exact same directory structure on the server as in your website folder on your hard drive.
Joined: 14 Sep 2004 Posts: 110 Location: Vancouver, BC Canada
Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2005 2:28 am Post subject:
Assume you have ftp'd your pages to the server.
If so, open the first page (a) "topic" in your browser.
View source - and find the link which (should be) pointing to your other page (b) "what-is-a-topic".
The links should be (as Eugen points out) something like
<a href="what-is-a-topic.html">what is a topic </a>
If it contains references to your hard drive (ie. c://blah blah blah or files://blah blah blah) you need to go back to your html editor and update the link.
You may also want to test the link by typing it into your browser to ensure th epage is loaded:
Thank you both for your replys.
All of my pages that I have so far are on the server, with other links leading to each other working fine. It's just the odd link throughout the site that seems to be changing. For example, If i'm at the "Topic" page and try to click on "what is a topic" page it will work fine. But if I am at a different "topic" page and click on "what is a topic" page (Which is supposed to be the exact same page) It gives the 404 error.
I have traced the problem back to when I save the link. No matter how I save it, whether it's left click and "make or change link" or through the edit feature or in the properties bar at the bottom, the link will work and point to the proper page at first. But, now that I have checked, if I go back and highlight that same link and look where it is pointing, the URL has now changed from "what-is-a-topic.htm" to "topic.htm" but the file name remains "what-is-a-topic". Then if I look one more time after that, both the file name and the URL have reverted to "topic.htm" Even though I hadn't made any changes.
Sorry for being long winded and possibly not making any sense, but this is effecting my site and I don't know what I can do about this. Mayby my Dreamweaver is corrupted or something. It might be time to upgrade it anyways.
Thanks again. _________________ Renewable Power Solutions Your Source For Understanding The World Of Alternative Power!
Ebook Builder 101 Your online guide to writing and promoting Ebooks.
Joined: 14 Sep 2004 Posts: 110 Location: Vancouver, BC Canada
Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2005 3:22 am Post subject:
before you spend $ on an upgrade -
check the link in the browser as I noted above
and ensure you are overwriting the old files when you ftp to the server - your ftp program should ask you to overwrite the existing files when you reload files.
I have checked the links in my source code and have made sure that all the files are being overwritten. The code does change on the links that are affected. After changing and uploading they will work. But if I latter make any changes to that page and upload it, the links will revert back to the bad ones again.
The problem is happening when I save it on my system, before I even upload to the server.
I don't understand why the links are being changed after I save them in dreamweaver. Even if I don't put the files on the server, they change.
Would it have anything to do with the name. For example I have files named "How-to-bla"
"How-to-blabla
"How-to-blablabla" and so on. could the problem lie within repeating the begining of file names?
Just guessiing and taking stabs at the dark at this point.
Thanks _________________ Renewable Power Solutions Your Source For Understanding The World Of Alternative Power!
Ebook Builder 101 Your online guide to writing and promoting Ebooks.
I don't know why, but this issue makes me think you play a lot with your scroll button. I too accidentally change links.
As a matter a fact, this hapened to me yesterday when I was working on a partners page. When I paste the link in the link box on the properties bar, or use the poin to file tool, I have a tendency to scroll down the page to see what's else to modify, while still having the link box selected.
What that does is actually scrolling through all the links present on the page instead of scrolling the page. And you don't notice this unless you're very careful. Make sure you don't accidentally do this.
If you still can't solve the link issue with dream weave, why not try doing it with Notepad? It's very relieble. Open the file with the problem by dragging&dropping it into notepad, then go to the link that couses pronblems. Fix it then save it. Use you're ftp software to put it online. If this still doesn't save the problem, then you know for sure it's not Dreamweaver's fault.
And as Andrea said, make sure the old files on the server are overwritten. As an extreme measure, first delete all files that cause problems from the server and then upload the new ones.
I tried changing the link again, this time making sure that I did not scroll or anything else. That does work... But, if I do anything else on the page and save it, the link will go back to the non working non existing link.
I have renamed the page from "what-is-a-topic" to "whatisatopic" and have not had any problems with it yet. I guess something happens when I add the ( - ) between the words in the title. I know that this looks bad and I'm not sure if bunching several words in a pages name together will do anything withe the SE but until I can figure out what I'm doing wrong, I'll have to do this whenever this problem happens.
Thanks again for the help.
PS. I'm still open for solutions. _________________ Renewable Power Solutions Your Source For Understanding The World Of Alternative Power!
Ebook Builder 101 Your online guide to writing and promoting Ebooks.
Well, I don't know ... "-" is surely not the problem. I think you have several settings messed up there.
If I were you at this point, I would uninstall Dreamweaver, delete its folder in the program files and reinstall it. That way, I would get rid of any settings that may cause that problem and Dreamweaver would work as new.
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It's very relieble. Open the file with the problem by dragging&dropping it into notepad, then go to the link that couses pronblems. Fix it then save it. Use you're ftp software to put it online. If this still doesn't save the problem, then you know for sure it's not Dreamweaver's fault.
