Chapter 1: Content Analyzer: A Tool for Webmasters

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Introduction

Tackle your Web site tasks with Content Analyzer, the best way to manage your Web site. Whether you're a Webmaster, an information architect, or a site publisher, Content Analyzer gives you the tools you need to solve your site management problems.

Presenting the WebMap

Content Analyzer lets you create WebMaps, which show your entire Web site in an easy-to-understand, visual format. A WebMap includes graphical representations of the resources in your site, such as HTML pages and graphic images; audio, video, and program files; Java, PDF, or Word files; Internet services, such as gopher and FTP. The map--with its easily identifiable icons and label colors--is a powerful tool that helps you quickly identify your site's structure. A glance at the map provides you with information you might otherwise spend hours trying to figure out.

See Two Views of the Same WebMap

You can choose to see either the Tree view of the map or the Cyberbolic view, or both. The Tree view provides a linear, hierarchical view of the map. The Cyberbolic view depicts the map items in a web-like structure that emphasizes their interconnected nature. As you work more with the program, you'll discover which view you prefer, and you can switch back and forth as you perform different tasks or work with different maps.

The Tree view (left) and the Cyberbolic view (right) provide two ways to look at your site 

Content Analyzer is a Powerful Tool for Resource and Link Management

The job of managing a complex Web site can be daunting. You need to keep track of all the resources in your site, making sure they're up-to-date and constructed correctly. And you need to make sure that all the links are in place and working correctly. Managing links is no small task, especially if your site contains thousands of them. Content Analyzer gives you a variety of tools--searches, the Link Info window, and properties, to name a few--to help you stay on top of your site's resources and links.

Import Usage Data to See How Your Site Is Being Used by the Rest of the Web

If your site is accessible on the World Wide Web, analyzing how other people use your site is a crucial part of site management. In your WebMap, you can include important information about your site's "extended Web presence"--how many times particular pages are being "hit," as well as the URLs where those hits originate. You can import usage data from a server's common log, combined log, or from a net.Analysis log report.

Get an Instant Summary of Your Site with HTML Site Reports

When you map a site, Content Analyzer generates a set of linked HTML-formatted reports that you can use to evaluate your site and pinpoint problems. These reports help you analyze your site's resources, monitor content changes, find broken links and other errors, and more. In addition, because you view the reports in your browser, you may want to include some of them (such as the hierarchy or index reports) in your site as navigational aids. The reports are linked to each other, and are hyperlinked to the site resources. Once you've pinpointed a particular page or other map object that you want to examine, you can jump directly to it with a single mouse click.

Search WebMaps to Get Information about Your Site

Searching is one of the most useful tools Content Analyzer offers for analyzing your site. Use one of Content Analyzer's Quick Searches to find information fast, or set up your own custom search. Searches can be narrow or broad, for a single object or for groups of objects. For example, you can search for a page that contains a particular text string, or you can search for all broken links in your site. You can search the entire map or confine your search to only a portion of it. You can perform And and Or (Boolean) searches, and you can even search the results of a search to further refine the findings. You can search for specific object types (such as images or program files) or for any combination of properties (such as file sizes or modification dates).

The Search Results window organizes and displays the results of your search

Once you perform a search, the results appear in the Search Results window. From this window, you can do any number of things: view properties for each object, view the selected object in your browser, even export the search results to HTML or to a database or spreadsheet. Searching in Content Analyzer is versatile and powerful, and is a handy way to keep on top of site tasks you perform regularly.

Use WebMaps to See What's Changed in Your Site

Content Analyzer helps you keep track of the various changes you make to your site. It's a breeze to remap your site after each major revision. Depending on the remap options you choose, you can retain any annotations from the old map, review a new set of HTML site reports, and see which areas of the site are new, orphaned, or changed. Comparing different versions of your site can be especially useful if you want to track the various stages of your site's development: alpha, beta, and live.

The Link Info window provides a wide range of information about the links in your site. For any object that you select in the map, you can see information about its links to other objects and about links (called InLinks) that point to the selected object. You can isolate the object's broken links, links to other sites (called offsite links), links going in particular directions in the hierarchy, and more.

The Link Info window displays comprehensive information about the links in your site 

Use Content Analyzer with Your Favorite Resource Authoring and Editing Tools

Use Content Analyzer as a unifying hub for all the applications you use to create and modify the pages and other resources in your Web site. You can configure as many as nine helper applications for each resource type. If you need to make changes to a page or other object, simply select the object in the map and launch your chosen application to edit the source file. Using Content Analyzer in conjunction with helper applications seamlessly integrates all the desktop tools you use to maintain your Web site.

Content Analyzer works in conjunction with your favorite authoring applications

Export Map Information to a Database or Spreadsheet or to HTML

If you use a database or spreadsheet to manage information about the resources in your Web site, exporting is an easy way to update them with information from your Web site. You can also export to HTML format--a useful feature if you want to include the information in your Web site or post it on your company's Intranet. You simply set up the map information you're interested in--whether it's the Tree view, a results window, or the Link Info window--then tell Content Analyzer to export it. You can export it to a tab-delimited file so you can use it in a spreadsheet or database. Or, you can export the information to HTML so you can view it in your browser (especially handy if you want to include a table of contents or index of the pages in your site).

You can export map information into spreadsheets such as Microsoft Excel 

Each WebMap object has a set of properties you can view in the Properties dialog box. Properties show you useful information such as the object's full URL, its local path, MIME type, hyperlink text, link type, name, and a lot more. Some of these properties are static and are derived from Content Analyzer's analysis of your site. You can control others by changing or adding information about the object.

View the object's properties in the Properties dialog box 

Power Browse the Web with Content Analyzer

You aren't limited to using Content Analyzer with just your own Web site. You can create WebMaps of any site on the Web, and then use Content Analyzer to power browse the site. Power browsing is as simple as examining a WebMap to pinpoint what you want to see, then double-clicking the map object and watching that page or image appear in your browser.

Double-click a map object you're interested in, and it appears in your browser 

Unlike navigating with a Web browser alone, Content Analyzer helps you keep track of where you are, no matter how far you've wandered in a Web site. With just a browser, it's easy to get lost in a complicated browsing session; but with Content Analyzer, you always have your map to keep your place.

Enjoy Content Analyzer