One of the things that really ticks me off is when you have a site that has a lot of broken links. One site that I hit a broken link like every 2 minutes is ibm.com. Not even links to external sites, but places to things within their site. Grrrr.... You'd think that they would have some fancy IBM tool that would go through a site and find all the broken links. I'm sure that they sell one, but I can't find it on their site. The link's broken. ;-P
Yeah, I usually hit three or four broken ibm links a week. Mostly to their technical articles that show up in google. :(
ReplyDeleteThe problem with giant monoliths like IBM is that most likely, the team in charge of Part A of the website isn't in charge of Part B of the website. This isn't to say that it's ok, but if they don't communicate properly, then there's going to be problems with links breaking. The thing with programming for the internet is that people think it's just really easy to fix bugs, because, you make a change, and it goes out to everybody instantly, without them having to download a patch. This sometimes means that things get on the web, without being fully bug tested first.
ReplyDeleteI'm not talking about a web app... I'm talking about a basic links and choices off their root pages. Honestly, how hard would it be for them to have some app that at least FINDS those problems... Ahhggg!
ReplyDeleteThey probably have and use a program which finds bad links, reports them, and all that other stuff. The problem is, after the link is reported bad, what has to happen. Someone has to go and fix that link. In big monoliths like IBM, somebody has to be assigned to fixing the link, then it has be fixed. It has to go around the bureacracy, assuring that all the proper channels have approved the fix, and finally, the file gets passed on to someone, who has to upload it to the live server. This whole process can take quite some time. It would be much easier if the person who discovered the bad link could just go fix it, upload it, and be done, but that would just be too easy.
ReplyDeleteI know how you feel. It's almost as bad as when you get a telephone menu and you go through like 20 keypresses only to get disconnected or sent back to step 1.
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