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Web Savvy -- General Guide: Outdated Pages?

A multi-page tutorial on evaluating web sites, for beginners and those who think they know.

Web Savvy -- Page 8 -- Outdated Pages?

There are several methods for making sure a web site or page is current:

1.  Check for a last date of revision or update. Web masters and authors put this date at the top or bottom of the page.

2.   Check the dates of news stories, blog entries, items in a feed, or references works cited.


3. Look at your page's address in the locator bar near the top of your browser. Then copy the it s using ctrl-c or right click and copy.

You can visit either Rex Swain's HTTP Viewer or Webnots HTTP Header Checker (not pictured). Paste in your web page address. Click the CAPTCHA box, and Submit. Note: not every page sends a Last Modified date with its header information, so this does not always work.

Rex Swain's HTTP viewer ready to go
Results from Rex Swain's HTTP viewer You recieve a long technical document. In the group of lines under Response Header at the bottom or second or third from the bottom is a Last-modified date.

Of course broken links, and missing images, are also signs of a site suffering from ange and/or neglect.

Below are screen shots of different methods of learning a page's date.

World Wide Web
Click on the image to date the page called World Wide Web.


Illustration from a biology syllabus
Click this image to find an old Biology syllabus' date of publication.