Checking Links in Your Site

It is not uncommon for a Web designer to add, delete, or change the filenames of pages in a site during the development process. It can be easy to overlook pages that link to deleted or renamed files and that have not been updated. It can be very frustrating for visitors to receive the "404: File Not Found" error message, indicating that a page is missing when they click a link.

In this exercise, you will use the Check Link feature to find those missing links. Dreamweaver can verify links only to files within the site. External links are listed, but it is up to you to test those links and make sure that the external links are valid URLs.

1.	Open links.html from the Check_Link folder in the Lesson_15_Testing folder. Choose File > Check Page > Check Links. The Link Checker tab of the Results dialog box opens. Broken Links should be selected by default when you run Check Links; any broken links are displayed in the Broken Links column. If Broken Links is not selected, choose it from the Show menu. In this exercise, only one broken link is displayed in the list. Tip You can also use the keyboard shortcut Shift+F8 to open the Link Checker report window.
2.	Click the name of the file to which the broken link points: ../About.html. The filename highlights, and a folder icon appears to the right of the broken link.
3.	Replace ../About.html by typing About.html in its place; then press Return (Macintosh) or Enter (Windows).

You can also click the folder icon and browse to the correct file to link to.

If there were any other broken references to the same file, a dialog box would open, asking if you want to fix the other references as well. Clicking Yes will fix all the references to the file.

Note

You can also check files or folders by selecting them in the Files panel and clicking the Files panel group context menu, and choosing File > Check Links. If you want to view the document or fix the links by using the Property inspector, double-click the filename in the Link Checker window to open the file. You used the context menu with the Files panel in Lesson 14.

You can save and close this file and leave the Results panel open.