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Check Links Sitewide

Ever wanted an easy way to test your site's links to be sure that nothing broke overnight? Dreamweaver has a built-in link check function, and it helps you easily correct those broken links!

By now, I'm certain that you've defined your site in Dreamweaver. If not, please do so. Consult your Dreamweaver documentation, after reading my Web tip on Building a Site on Your Hard Drive.

Once your site is defined and open in your Dreamweaver Site Manager (or Site Panel), go to your Site menu and select Check Links Sitewide.

Dreamweaver generates a report with all broken internal links on your site. To fix a link, you can click into the broken link and browse (via the folder icon) to find the correct file.

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If you cannot find the file, you will need to either copy it into your site (preferably bringing it to the location referenced in your HTML file) or delete the reference from the referring file. You can open any file by double-clicking the file name in the link report.

Note: The Check Links Sitewide function helps you find all internal links, including missing graphics, bad links to Web pages, PDF and audio files, etc.

Unfortunately, to see local file references (starting with "file://"), you need to change your Link Checker from "Show Broken Links" to "Show External Links." While the External Links section supposedly shows all external links, not just broken ones, any link starting with "file://" is a broken link and should be fixed. While you can't browse to these files, you can edit the links by hand to correct them.

Additionally, you can find orphan files (files that are not used) by changing your link report to Show Orphaned Files.

If you need to check external links, try Xenu, a PC program that you can download for free.