OVERVIEW
Target audience: Site Administrators, Site Managers, Site Editors
The Web Management System (WMS) includes a link checker on each website that automatically and continuously checks for broken links.
In this article:
- How the link checker works
- Broken links report (available to Site Administrators and Site Managers only)
- Broken links list at the top of pages in Edit mode (available to Site Administrators, Site Managers, and Site Editors)
How the link checker works
The link checker runs continuously, hitting each content node (e.g., web pages, blocks, Channels News, Channels Events, etc.) in the WMS approximately every two to four weeks. Each node is checked for broken links to other nodes or to external sites.
Broken links found can be viewed as follows:
- Broken links for all nodes on the site are listed on a Broken links report, viewable only by Site Administrators and Site Managers. The affected pages can be accessed easily from the report.
- On each page of the site, in Edit mode, there is a list of broken links.
Once a link is fixed or removed, it disappears from both of the areas described above.
Note: The link check is applied to ALL nodes (whether published or unpublished), so broken links on unpublished pages will remain listed until the link is fixed/removed, or until the unpublished page is deleted.
Broken links report (available to Site Administrators and Site Managers only)
- After signing in, click Reports in the site administration menu, then click Broken links.
- The Broken links report shows each broken link found on all nodes of a site (published and unpublished) since the last round of link checking.
- URL column: The full URL of the broken link
- RESPONSE and ERROR columns: The most common are "404 Not Found," "503 Service Unavailable," or "301 Moved Permanently."
For definitions of all status codes, see the Wikipedia page: List of HTTP status codes
- OPERATIONS column: A link to the node containing the broken link. Click to go to the node and fix the broken link.
Broken links list at the top of pages in Edit mode (available to Site Administrators, Site Managers, and Site Editors)
When accessing a page in Edit mode, the broken links on that node are displayed with details inside a yellow box at the top of the page.
The number of times that the link failed for each round of link checking (approximately every two to four weeks) is indicated.
For definitions of all status codes, see the Wikipedia page: List of HTTP status codes
NOTES:
- When using links that are a redirect (e.g., https://mcgill.ca/itsupport/wms instead of https://mcgill.service-now.com/itportal?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0010904), the link checker will display a "status code: 301" error. This is normal; whenever possible, a direct link should be used instead of a redirect.
- For links to other WMS sites that do resolve but indicate a "301 Moved Permanently" error, add a trailing slash "/" at the end of the URL so that it will not show up on the broken links reports. Example: https://www.mcgill.ca/sitename/
