Running the Link checker

November 14, 2023

About the link checker

The link checker is a powerful administration tool that allows site administrators to check an entire Jahia site for "dead" or broken external links. An external link is a link pointing to pages outside the platform, therefore outside of Jahia’s control. You open the link checker from jContent>Additional>Link checker.

Typically, an external link is prone to become "broken": the author may have mistyped the link (e.g. goggle.com instead of google.com) or the target page may simply disappear, change name or location after some time.

The link checker will browse all Jahia pages for external links submitted by authors, including content entered through the rich text editor. Then it will display a report that will help the site administrator to fix broken links. The tool will scan all pages in the selected mode, for all languages.

To launch the scan, just click on the "Start checking" button, then on the "Display progress" button to view the results. The page will refresh automatically every 5 seconds. The "Clean stored results" button will clear older results before launching a new scan.

Note: The link checker is very demanding for the server. Running it occasionally will help maintain high editorial quality for the site, but it is not recommended to use it continuously.

Launching a website analysis

To audit the links and be able to repair "broken" links, in from jContent>Additional>Link checker, click Start Checking.

The time taken to check links depends on the volume of data to be analyzed.

jcontent-link-checker.png

As soon as the administrator launches the link checker, activity status details will be available in the lower part of the panel when clicking on the Display progress button.

Note that only broken links are displayed. Valid links do not appear in the report.

Description of the Link checker report

There are five columns in the link checker report:

  • Path
    Path of the node containing the broken link
  • Properties
    Property in the affected node that contains the broken link
  • Link
    Link that generates the error
  • Status
    Description of the problem
  • Code
    The HTTP error code