Are you worried that your knowledge base contains bad links that might lead to 404 pages and a bad reader experience? Use the Broken link checker to run a report that identifies broken links so you can fix them. Then rerun the checker periodically to be sure those links stay fixed.
Our default Editor and Writer roles have permission to use the broken link checker. If you're using a custom author role, that role must have the Tools custom author role permission to Run broken link reports.
The Broken link checker scans all articles with Published or Needs Review publishing statuses in your knowledge base to check for broken hyperlinks. It then generates a Broken links report CSV file containing all the detected broken links. It includes most hyperlinks across your knowledge base, though there are some links it won't check.
You can refine the report to include additional content, such as:
- Draft articles
- Archived articles
- Article Versions (this will include all non-active versions in the checks, including historical versions)
Broken link limitations
The report can only check links that are publicly available. If you have hyperlinks to resources behind a company firewall, VPN, or other login, those links will show up in the report even though you might have no trouble accessing them. You may want to ignore 401 or 403 codes if you're seeing a lot of these.
The checker lets you ignore certain error codes that aren't cause for concern. For example, it ignores links that trigger a 301 or 302 code, since these codes indicate a redirection and a successful ultimate load. You can also choose to ignore 401, 403, or 500 response codes.
Not familiar with HTTP status codes? Refer to Exclude codes for a quick primer.
Once the report has been generated, it remains available in Tools > Broken link checker until you generate a new one, so you can also start this report, go do other things, and then come back and download it later.
The checker will only allow one report per knowledge base to be generated at a time, so if you have multiple authors and one person starts it, everyone else will be prevented from running a new report until that report has finished generating.
Start using Broken link checker
Review the information below on What content is checked and What content isn't checked.
Follow the instructions to Generate a broken links report. Then follow the Use the broken links report guidelines to make sense of the report and fix your links.
Here are all the objects and fields the Broken link checker reviews as it creates the Broken Links Report:
- Article
- Article Content: Always check all text entered in the editor of the article.
- Redirect URL: If an article has the URL Redirect box checked, check the redirect URL.
- Thumbnail URL and Banner URL: If an article has a designated thumbnail and banner, it checks those URLs.
- Category
- Category description: Always check the category description text.
- Redirect URL: If a category is set up as a URL Redirect category type, check the redirect URL.
- Icon URL: If a category has a designated icon, check that URL.
- Thumbnail URL and Banner URL: Topic display categories and Custom content categories can also have thumbnails and banners. If these categories have thumbnails or banners added, check those URLs.
- Category Content: If it's a Custom content category, check all text entered in the editor, just like an article.
- Category description: Always check the category description text.
- Snippet
- Snippet Content: Always check all text entered in the editor of the snippet.
- Homepage
- Homepage Content: Always check all text entered in the Customize > Homepage > Custom content editor.
- Theme
- Custom HTML: Always check all HTML entered into any of the Custom HTML templates in Customize > Style (HTML & CSS).
- The report identifies which Custom HTML template is the issue in the Object Field column (404 Error, Article, Body, Homepage, Login, Manage Reader Subscriptions, Restricted Access Page, Right Column, or Top Navigation).
- Article Versions:
- Version Content: If versions are included, check all text entered in the editor of all article versions. Refer to Additional content options for more information on including version content checks in your broken link checker.
No checks for embedded images, videos, or iframes
For all Content checks, the report won't check img, video, and iframe sources (src), just straight hyperlinks. So if you've used the editor options to Insert Image or Insert Video, those URLs will not be checked. Refer to What is not checked for more information.
The Broken link checker has three known limitations:
- Displayed images, videos, and iframes: For all Content checks, the report won't check the source (src) value. It only checks explicit hyperlinks. So if you've used the editor options to Insert Image or Insert Video, or you've inserted your own iframe, those src URLs won't be checked. If you'd like to see image, video, or iframe sources included in these reports, please contact us and let us know.
- Anchors: The Broken links checker won't check the validity of anchor or other hash portions of a hyperlink. Issues with anchors don't surface as independent HTTP status codes, so we had no automated way to check these.
- The checker completely ignores same-page anchors (hyperlinks beginning with #).
- For external page URLs that include an anchor, the checker strips off the anchor and checks the base URL of the page only.
- Private content: If you link to resources that require a login of some kind to view, such as within your company intranet, or behind a VPN, or documentation elsewhere that is behind a login page, those links will generally show up in the report with some 400-level status code. While we can validate resources that are stored within KnowledgeOwl, we have no way to pass authorization to check private resources stored elsewhere.
- mailto: links: Since these links aren't a true URL, they can't be verified through the automated process we use. The report ignores these links.
- javascript links: Since these links usually perform an action rather than hitting a URL, they can't be verified through the automated process we use. The report ignores these links.
- tel: links: As with the mailto links, these links can't be verified through the automated process we use. The report ignores these links.
