The Portland Timbers appear to be trading outside back Michael Harrington to the Colorado Rapids.

The Timbers would not comment on the trade. The Colorado Rapids could not be immediately reached for comment.

A flaw on the MLS team websites appears to indicate that a roster page has been created for Michael Harrington on Colorado's team website.

Credible information indicating that Harrington was on the verge of being traded prompted The Oregonian to use the MLS team website flaw to find out details about the trade.

The URL convention to look up an MLS player's bio is the same across all MLS team websites: teamname.com/players/firstname-lastname.

When The Oregonian tried to access Harrington's bio page on the Colorado Rapids website, an error message came up that read, "Access denied: You are not authorized to access this page."

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Usually when a player is not a member of a team, a different message appears.

For example, when you use the same URL convention to look up Harrington on another team's website -- for example, Real Salt Lake -- or you look up the name of a player that does not play for the Rapids on Colorado's website -- for example, Robbie Keane -- you get a message that reads, "There are no players that match your search criteria. Please try again."

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The access denied message appears to be reserved for players that have had a bio page created by the club that simply has yet to go live. It appears to be a way to confirm that a player has been signed by or traded to a specific MLS club before the official announcement goes out.

The Oregonian explained the flaw in more detail in another article on Friday.

Harrington was Portland's most consistent defender in 2013 and made 33 starts during the year. His 2013 performance earned him a call up to the U.S. National Team camp in January.

But in 2014, Harrington fell out of favor in the middle of the season after some poor performances and ankle injures. He lost his starting spot to left back Jorge Villafana by the middle of the summer.

The Oregonian used the same MLS team website flaw to see if the "Access Denied" error message would pop up for any Colorado players plugged into the Timbers roster page. That error message did not appear for any players currently listed on Colorado's roster.

With the Timbers looking to free up some budget space in order to bring in some new players before next season, a decision to trade Harrington for allocation money or a draft pick would make sense.

What do you, Timbers fans, think about losing Harrington to Colorado?

-- Jamie Goldberg | @jamiebgoldberg