FIXED: Alert for broken link for videos (retest links)

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   Bard of Elyposted 11 years ago

   Today I have had several alerts for broken links in my hubs that turned out to be videos and all were actually working when I tried playing them,

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      LillyGrillzitposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      The only thing I can think of, is perhaps the original videos have been updated, and they needed a little "refreshing".
      
      It is just an idea.

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         Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         This problem has happened here before and for other people too. It is annoying because unless you check that the videos play or not you can trust the HubPages alert and delete perfectly workable videos as I have done in the past until I realised that the alerts are not always right!

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            LillyGrillzitposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            I agree! I was on the diplomatic high road, but am also frustrated with links that are being targeted as broken, or not applicable in Hubs, and those alerts are innaccurate or uninformed.
            
            Thanks for speaking up.

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               Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

               Well, I find it a further time-waster!  Also problems that have happened once you would think would get fixed and then not happen again but this is not the case!

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      Matthew Meyerposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      This has been sent to our engineering team so hopefully we can get it addressed going forward as we are aware this keeps cropping up.
      
      As several people have pointed out you can retest and resolve most of these warnings here:
      http://hubpages.com/my/hubs/broken-links

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         Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         OK, thanks for looking into this, Matthew!

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   Writer Foxposted 11 years ago

   Happened to me, too.  I even deleted the video link, published, edited again and reinserted the link, published, but it still had the same 'broken link' warning.  Who has time for this?

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      Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Yes, it is a lot of nonsense and certainly no improvement to this site!

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3. 92

   AliciaCposted 11 years ago

   I'm having this problem too, but a while ago someone made a helpful forum post about a quick way to get rid of “broken” links that aren’t really broken. I can’t remember who it was, but their advice was very useful, because I didn’t know how to do this myself! If you go to “My Account”, then to “Broken Links”, the problem links will be listed. Then if you click the “retest” box beside a link a message comes up that says the link is good and the problem is solved. If the message says that the link is bad then you know that you have to edit the hub. Even if you have a lot of broken links that aren’t really broken, it’s quick to click the retest button on each one.

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      secularist10posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I was having the same problem and this cleared it up, thanks Alicia.

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         AliciaCposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         You're welcome, secularist10.

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      Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for this info! I will give it a go now!

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      divacratusposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Thank you so much AliciaC! This solved my problem completely. I had tried everything from removing the links and inserting new video modules but nothing seemed to work. The retesting part worked like a charm.

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      Teresa Coppensposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Just tried this myself and as the links were good the broken link symbol disappeared.    Thanks for the tip Alicia!

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      DzyMsLizzyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for this info--I'll go try it now.  I just wrote to TEAM..a second e-mail in as many days about the same issue...on two different hubs.
      
      In both instances, the supposed 'problem' was with video clips, which, when clicked, loaded and played just fine, thank you very much!  And no, there was no inordinate delay in loading/playing--it was nearly instantaneous--within 2 or 3 seconds.  Have people become that damned impatient???
      
      Regardless of the fact that the fix may turn out to be simple, that's not the point!
      
      The point is, why should we have to deal with this?   Shouldn't HP be finding and fixing the glitch that is causing bogus broken link warnings????!!!!
      
      P.S.  I just went to do that test/reset, and it did fix the issue, but the links were not "broken," but the message at the 'broken links'  menu said, in each case, "forbidden."  WTH???!!!  They reset fine, so obviously I did not select 'bad' or 'forbidden' videos in the first place...  This is a very annoying glitch that needs fixing NOW. 
      If they had been 'forbidden,' that should have come up right away upon trying to insert the link in the capsule.

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         Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         As I have pointed out it is also finding bad links that are not even there because the hubs they referred to have been deleted! I too find this very time wasting!  I had one today about a tropical fish and had included four videos, all of which HubPages reckoned were not working, and all of which played just fine!

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         cascolyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         i had multiple 403 forbidden errors too - in every case, they tested fine from my acct and when i looked at them w/o being logged in to HP
         
         easiest is just ignore this stuff until HP decides they care enough to fix their system - either the video capsules or their testing is off.

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      LillyGrillzitposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      You have saved the day, and stopped some great irritation for me. Thank you AliciaC

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      Reality Bytesposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Yep, this is the best way to do it. I had over twenty potential broken links yesterday.  Every single one of them tested correctly.  the issue was resolved immediately.

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   2uesdayposted 11 years ago

   Thank you Alicia, you solved the problem for me too.  The retest showed it was OK without having to go into edit.

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5. 80

   Bard of Elyposted 11 years ago

   I still have problems with it. The retest lists Facebook profile links as bad but when I click on them they work!
   
   In another hub it finds two bad links but  they are not shown in yellow in editing mode and they don't exist because I deleted the hubs.

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      diyomarpandanposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Deleted
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         Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         I don't want to delete the text or the links seeing as the hubs are promoting people on Facebook which is the whole purpose of me sharing them in the first place.

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   sparksterposted 11 years ago

   Same problem here. Any of my hubs which have videos included are showing up that the links are not working, even though there is nothing wrong with them.
   
   TBH Bard,I wouldn't worry about it too much for now. Public readers can still view the videos and they cannot tell that there are issues when you are 'logged in' to Hubpages so from a readers perspective all of our hubs should still be working properly regardless.
   
   Also, Google's crawlers do not log in to HP when indexing your pages so it shouldn't make any different to SEO or anything like that either.

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      Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for posting, Sparkster! Sorry to hear you have this problem too!

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   mary615posted 11 years ago

   I had six "broken link" symbol on Hubs.  I hit the retest button and they were fine.  These were all for videos that were good after all.

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   midget38posted 11 years ago

   Me too, all. I had to "repair" broken links today.  A few were because of unpublished "sleepers." If they were in the links to some of these hubs, they'd be broken. You are right, Bard of Ely, the videos were working. I think the problem is the site could not connect to them.

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      DzyMsLizzyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Why would "the site" be unable to connect, when everyone else can, from within the site??!!
      Does not compute!

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         midget38posted 11 years agoin reply to this

         My guess is that because this site supports many Hubbers, it will have many servers and computer server hubs...perhaps the one they use that connects to video links in our hubs could not register them somehow. If that is the case, hope it's fixed now.

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   UnnamedHaraldposted 11 years ago

   I hope this isn't taken as a violation of the "Do not start threads for the sole purpose of promotion or posting links." but this hub is flagged as having two broken links, but they are alive and well:
   
   http://unnamedharald.hubpages.com/hub/D … nd-Avatars
   
   I have "reset" the (same) URLs, made sure I made some innocuous changes and saved the video widgets and republished the hub to no avail.

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10. 91

    UnnamedHaraldposted 11 years ago

    Just thought I'd mention how I got the "broken links" to go away. As I mentioned, the URLs were good and, when I looked at the hub it was fine, but despite resetting them in the Video widget, they were still reported as broken (I had two "broken" links).
    
    I added two brand new Video widgets, filled them out like the others and deleted the original Video widgets. Problem solved.

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11. STAFF

    HubPagesposted 11 years ago

    Hi everyone!
    
    Just a friendly note that this problem should be fixed now by engineers. Let us know if you're still experiencing broken video link issues!

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