How Does OrFind Work?
OrFind is a powerful tool for assisting in the detection and removal of unused (orphaned) website files. Its unique technology involves a two-step analysis process to identify files on your server which may no longer be linked by active pages on your website. To get the most out of OrFind, it’s important to understand how this process works.
Dynamic websites can be incredibly complicated. Determining which files are in use by your website and which are no longer needed is no simple task. The first step is to crawl your website’s HTML content. This causes your server to run any server-side programming and allows OrFind to locate images, style sheets and other content that is dynamically included by your website when a page is requested. Examples of dynamic content include blog posts and product descriptions that are stored in your website’s database.
The second step is a static code analysis of your website’s server-side content. This involves a direct inspection of the code that resides on your server without running it in order to find files references that cannot be seen through your website’s HTML output. This technology, while powerful, does have some limitations as described below.
What server side technologies are supported?
Our goal is to make OrFind as robust as possible out-of-the-box. Below is a list of currently supported server-side technologies. If your website uses a technology that is not listed here, please contact us and we would be happy to add support for your platform.
- ASP.NET (including C# and VB Code-Behind)
- Classic ASP
- ColdFusion (.cfm)
- JSP
- PHP
- Server-Side Includes (.shtml)
What are the limitations of this technology?
OrFind relies on static code analysis to identify which files are in use by your websites. While this technique provides a high degree of success with most websites, some files references cannot be automatically determined this way. Be mindful that OrFind cannot automatically detect the following types of references files:
- Website links or images that have dynamically generated URLs by JavaScript code
- Server-side file references that are included by dynamically generating filenames
- Server-side content linked through binary references (such as DLLs, Java “.class” files, etc.)
OrFind is an amazing tool to help identify candidate orphaned files. You should rely on it as a means to guide you through identifying which files are orphans and which are in use. Always review results manually before permanently removing files from your website. We strongly recommend you use the “backup” feature to make a local copy of any files that are identified as orphans before removing them from your website.
Satisfied Customers
Don’t just take our word for it. From start-up businesses to global enterprises, everyone is using Inspyder Software products! No matter how big or small your website is, our products are right for you. Our customers include:
Minimum Requirements
- Windows XP SP2 or Higher
- 32-bit and 64-bit supported
- 1GB RAM
- 1GB of available hard disk space
