You can open a worksheet by selecting the New command from the File menu. It is divided into two parts. In the left part you can see the individual settings of the current check. The right part shows the process of checking links.

To start checking links, enter the address of the site into the URL field, set the necessary values for other parameters and click the Start button. You can click the Pause button to pause the process or the Stop button to stop it.

The Reports menu contains commands for creating and saving reports about the work of Fast Link Checker.

You can save the worksheet of the current window by selecting the Save worksheet command from the File menu. The program saves the current state of the check in the current window at the current moment. You can restore the worksheet with the Load worksheet command from the File menu.

Each worksheet is also saved automatically when you close the program, so you can pause the current check and close the program. When you open it next time, the worksheet will be restored and you can continue checking links by clicking the Start button.

URL
The address of the site to check links on. It can consist of a protocol name, a domain name and a link to the resource. For example, http://www.mysite.com/index.html. In this example, the program will check all pages on mysite.com starting from index.html. Another example is http://www.mysite.com/subdir/. In this example, the program will check all pages in the subdir directory of mysite.com.

Display site name as
This name is to substitute instead of the actual site name. So the report will contain this site name. For example, when checking http://www.mysite.com/index.html you can specify "myanothersite" in "Diaplay site name as" and all the links to mysite will be displayed as the links to myanothersite.

Recheck bad links
This option allows you to automatically re-check links which are failed due to a system errors such as timeout, error reading file, socket errors, etc., which appeared on your local system, not on web-server.

Check hyperlinks
Select this option to check links to hypertext pages.

Check images
Select this option to check links to graphic objects.

Check other links (script, css, etc.)
Select this option to check links to scripts, style sheets and other objects.

Ignore robots.txt file
Normally, Fast Link Checker does not check links on pages forbidden to be indexed by robots in the robots.txt file. Select this option to let the program check links on pages forbidden to be indexed by robots in the robots.txt file.

Check links only in the first URL
This option allows you to check links only on the page specified in the URL field. The program will not follow links it will find on this page, but will only check their availability.

Do not check external links
Normally, Fast Link Checker checks all links that lead from the current site to other external sites. You can change this behavior by selecting this option. The program will ignore links to other sites and check only links within the current site.

Ignore case when comparing links
Normally, Fast Link Checker considers all links to be case-sensitive. Select this option to make Fast Link Checker ignore the case of letters when comparing links.

Restrict checking to directory level
If you check links on large sites, you can restrict the level of subdirectories to be checked. For example, if you specify "3" in this field, the program will not check links on pages below the third level from the checking folder. When checking links on www.mysite.com pages located in the directory www.mysite.com/level_1/level_2/level_3/ will not be checked. This option allows you to check links on large sites in parts, restricting the level of subfolders.

Check files in parent directory
Normally, if you specify start URL like "http://www.mysite.com/subdir/", the links in the directory "subdir" will only be checked. With this option entire site will be checked not depending on the start directory.

Check only files below/above size
Skip all files which size is greather or less than specified number of kilobytes.

Do not check slow links
Skip checking all links marked as slow. Normally slow links are checked like all other links but when this option is set all slow links will be skipped. See also Slow link time options on the Options tab of Settings dialog.

Check only the following files
Skip all files which do not meet the wildcards specified. Use semicolon (;) to separate entries. For example, if you specify "/files/*.html;/dir/*" then will be checked only: (a) all html files in the "files" directory and (b) all files in the "dir" directory and its subdirectories.

Skip the following files
Skip all files which do not meet the wildcards specified. Use semicolon (;) to separate entries. For example, if you specify "/files/*.html;/dir/*" then will be checked only: (a) all html files in the "files" directory and (b) all files in the "dir" directory and its subdirectories.

Processing
This list contains links either already checked or being checked at the moment and the state of checking (whether the resource the link refers to is found and the description of the error if the resource is not found).

Site layout
Site layout represents the structure of the site being checked with its folders and files. Broken links are marked by the error sign in the icon. Hold mouse cursor over an item to view extended information for it.

Broken links
This list contains all broken links found on the site, the page where they are located, their position there and a possible cause why they do not work.