Changing links sitewide in Dreamweaver

[Quickdraw]

After spending some time trying to figure out how to get rid of sponsor links in a fast way across an entire 'static' site, I (finally) discovered Dreamweaver can successfully use Regular Expressions to find the list of everchanging styles of links, whether they be banners or different text.
This goes in the 'Search For' box when finding within your source code option.

<a(.*?)(SOMETHING_IN_URL_UNIQUE_LIKE_YOUR_AFF_ID)(.*?)">(.*?\s*?.*?)</a>

If you want to save some of the data just use $1, $2, $3, respectively for each set of parentheses. If you wanted to keep the linking text(or image) you would use $4 somewhere within your 'Replace With' box. Of course if you are using banners using $4 will just leaved an unlinked sponsor banner.

Anyway, I know it's nothing special, but might save someone some time.
Oh, and if you use Dreamweaver this url might come in handy before your next crash.
http://mm-exporter.joexx.de/

[Quickdraw]

only 12 views
Maybe I should add a sig and become an unsuccessful board whore

Going against RRRed's advice and bumping my own thread

[Shok]

not really sure what your trying to say.

But changing links site wide on dreamweaver is very simple, jusy hit CTRL F and make the change there and hit go.

[Quickdraw]

Originally Posted by Shok

not really sure what your trying to say.

But changing links site wide on dreamweaver is very simple, jusy hit CTRL F and make the change there and hit go.

It was the use of REGEX or regular expressions within Dreamweaver that excited me. If all the links were identical, regex wouldn't be needed. Of course there are many programs that allow this, but I was happy not to have to open another program.

I purchased a network of sites from a guy that did everything 'static', so when his sponsor changed the way they worked he got frustrated and quit basically as his links were all out of date, and fixing them was more a pain than he wanted.
All his codes were different as each link went to different sites/campaigns with that sponsor, so just doing a 'specific tag' search for a specific sponsor URL didn't work very fast.

The code above basically looks for a '<a' statement that contains something unique about all the links I was trying to replace. So basically I could ditch all those dead links in one go instead of finding and replacing each and every different style of link individually.

If you read all that, I hope I was able to clear it up abit I think my my communication skills are lacking

[OG LennyT]

I always copy and paste to Notepad and use the 'replace all' function to do mass url changes.

I love notepad

[Fetish Gimp]

Cool tip, thanks. You'd still have to upload all those pages, although using the "Select Recently Modified" it might not be that bad.

[Quickdraw]

Originally Posted by Fetish Gimp

Cool tip, thanks. You'd still have to upload all those pages, although using the "Select Recently Modified" it might not be that bad.

Yes, the synchronize option comes in handy

[Mighty Chin]

Find and replace...pretty simple...even shok knows that!

[Quickdraw]

Originally Posted by dvd316

I always copy and paste to Notepad and use the 'replace all' function to do mass url changes.

I love notepad

I like notepad too, but I tend to have a bunch of programs open and this just made it so I could use one less program while getting my 400 bones worth out of Dreamweaver

[Quickdraw]

Originally Posted by Mighty Chin

Find and replace...pretty simple...even shok knows that!

yeah, well, some of us aren't as smart as others and it takes a while to figure out the more advanced features of programs.. Most people I have talked to had no idea they could use regex in DW

[Mighty Chin]

Thats the first time I've heard someone call Shok smart!