Hi all,

I was using the VERIFY and STATUS features under LINKS today in order to flush out any broken URLs from my directory. After making a few modifications, the MODIFY feature has ceased to work. I get the following error:

"
Error: Unable to Modify Links

There were problems modifying the record: The requested record was not found in the database, or there was an error modifying the record
Status (Invalid format)
"

Can anyone help me out with this?

Thanks!

Did you by any chance try modifying a record without making changes to it? I think that's the error that it gives in that case. As I recall, certain fields are ignored as far as no changes being seen as made.

If that's what it is, Alex is aware of it and I'm guessing it will be fixed in the upcoming release.

Dan

I may have tried to make a change without modifying the link, but would this screw everything up? I have subsequently tried to modify links, getting the same error. How do I fix this?

I would try changing the URL of a record (you can quickly change it back) just to make sure. If you get an error, then it is a different problem. If it modifies ok, it's probably what I described.

You mentioned making some modifications. Was that to the script or did you just mean you modified some records?

Dan

I did nothing to the script... it was all in the admin area making changes to link records. It seems as though I can successfully modify all "normal" links, but none that have been marked "bad" by the verification/status tools.

Ah, I think that might be the source of the problem. As I recall, you cannot modify a record with a non-200 status code. You can change it to 200, and I believe the script will somehow keep it in memory until it actually verifies it as being a 200. At least, that's been my experience from looking through the status screens.

Dan

So what exactly do I need to do? I have to somehow remove the "problem" links from the verifcation/status database?

From the modify screen you can manually change the status field to 200 and make any changes you want to the record. The program should keep the problem status code in memory for the screen for that particular status code, only it will show its last value as 200. Once it has truly been verified as a 200, it will be dropped from that bad status page.

Ahhh... I see. I have to change the status to 200 in order to modify. Thanks for the help! Why does it do this?

On another note, is there any "best" way to weight the fields for optimal search? What do the 0-10 weights actually mean, in layman's terms?

I haven't a clue why it does that...

A weight of zero means that field will not be included in a search, and a higher weight means it will be scored more heavily in search results. You probably want things like title and description to have the highest weight, with things like add date and status probably having zero weight. I don't know how accurate the weight scoring is, as the search results with the current release are often baffling.

Dan