Fix dead links on migrated website (Error 404 etc)

[peterjc]

We know about a few problem links e.g. #8 #13 #17, but should check this systematically. There are also some external links which no longer work.

Ideally we'd have a TravisCI configuration to run Jekyll and then spider the _site/ folder to spot any link breakage.

[JoaoRodrigues]

@peterjc We can try this approach. Seems to be exactly what we are looking for.

[peterjc]

Yes exactly :)

[JoaoRodrigues]

I can give it a try, but I guess I'd need access to TravisCI?

[peterjc]

You should be able to try this by forking this to JoaoRodrigues.github.io and using your personal TravisCI account, e.g. https://github.com/peterjc/peterjc.github.io/blob/pre_auto_import/.travis.yml (currently out of sync) would just install and run Jekyll?

[peterjc]

I've just turned on https://travis-ci.org/biopython/biopython.github.io/ which should read https://github.com/biopython/biopython.github.io/blob/master/.travis.yml next time we update the website.

Currently the Travis configuration just runs Jekyll (a useful test in itself).

[vincentdavis]

Attached are two link reports, Internal only and all dead links.
Where are the /DIST files hosted?

I will happily work on links.

All bad links v2 April 19 2016.csv.zip

Internal Bad links April 19 2016.csv.zip

[peterjc]

They're on a GitHub Pages "project" repository, see #7 and https://github.com/biopython/DIST (note gh-pages branch)

GitHub isn't ideal for what are mostly a collection of static files - and this is largely separate from the website so this seemed like a good idea. Long term I'd like us to host all our releases on PyPI (which currently doesn't cover Windows EXE/MSI files, but can do wheels).

[peterjc]

Many of the "internal" links Vincent flagged were inter-wiki links, mostly to BioPerl's wiki - see #17

[MarkusPiotrowski]

If I don't find a folder/file on https://github.com/biopython/DIST, e.g. http://biopython.org/DIST/docs/cluster/cluster.pdf, wasn't it transferred, did it go elsewhere or was is already missing before?

[peterjc]

@MarkusPiotrowski the DIST folder is being done as a GitHub Project Page, see https://github.com/biopython/DIST and earlier comments on this issue.

I had missed the cluster.pdf file, thanks for reporting that. I've committed that under @mdehoon's name under the publication date (July 2008): biopython/DIST@282fcb0

[MarkusPiotrowski]

Other files on DIST that I'm missing are ACMbiopy.pdf and ACMbiopy.html (Chapman & Chang 2000 Biopython paper), formerly on [http://biopython.org/DIST/docs/acm/]

[peterjc]

Thanks @MarkusPiotrowski - I've added those too, under @chapmanb using the end of August 2000 as the date: biopython/DIST@dc1fb6b - This would sit better under the presentations folder, but I don't want to needlessly break old URLs.

See also http://lists.open-bio.org/pipermail/biopython/2000-July/000305.html where Brad posted a draft of this to the mailing list.

[peterjc]

Commit f173c02 was to enable me to use the Google website tools on biopython.org again (I'd set this up before on the old MediaWiki site), which includes broken link reports etc (see also #49 for the mailing list archive links).

As a bonus it reminded me to fix the robots.txt file 6bc179a

[peterjc]

@vincentdavis we've fixed a lot of broken URLs in the last week or so - could you re-run that link checker? If you can post the new results as a gist rather than a zip file that might be slightly easier to view. Thanks!

[MarkusPiotrowski]

Recent status of broken links: https://gist.github.com/MarkusPiotrowski/37fdb4b1a27ec6e61a6b667a8fd4686a

About 175 broken links left (one month before we had ~450!):

• most of these (~150) are missing Biopython versions (mostly .zip files and Windows installers, see also Providing all the past releases via GitHub Pages #7)
• another ~20 files are related to the Tutorial (example files etc in SRC and DIST\docs).

[peterjc]

Thanks Markus - we're getting there!

We're not maintaining the biopython.org/SRC/ files anymore, instead those ought to point at the GitHub repository raw files, e.g. 24f297a

I don't think we ever wrote http://biopython.org/wiki/SeqFeature but it would be a logical addition - although as usual we have the tension with duplicating documentation in the tutorial and docstrings.

The news feed link was an easy fix: 7068156

Edit: I dealt with the missing user pages with 647e0f2 and d65f7b3

[peterjc]

I think biopython/biopython@e5072b9 fixed most of the URLs in the Tutorial, perhaps I should put this online now rather than waiting for the next Biopython release?

[peterjc]

biopython/DIST@1a6013a should fix all the missing *.zip releases as part of #7.

[peterjc]

Removed links to Tutorial-dev.html and Tutorial-dev.pdf from the Tutorial in biopython/biopython@baed26e