Checking for Broken Links

One of the more vexing problems with Web sites are broken links, that is, links that no longer point to valid destinations within your site. Dreamweaver usually does a pretty good job of updating links when you move or rename a page, but you can still end up with broken links if you cut or copy page content from one page to another on your site. Dreamweaver allows you to check all of the links on your site to make sure they are still valid and reports any broken links it finds. You can then easily open the file that contains the broken link to fix it.

To check for and fix broken links throughout your site:

1.	Choose Site > Check Links Sitewide, or press Ctrl-F8 (Cmd-F8). Dreamweaver checks all the pages on your site and shows you files with broken links in the Link Checker tab of the Results panel ( Figure 16.24 ). Figure 16.24. Files with broken links appear in the Results panel.
2.	Double-click on one of the results. The file with the broken link opens, with the broken link highlighted ( Figure 16.25 ). Figure 16.25. To fix the broken link, double-click on one of the report results; the file with the broken link opens with the broken link highlighted.
3.	Using the Property Inspector, fix the broken link. For more information about using the Property Inspector to work with links, see Chapter 7.
4.	Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you have eliminated all of the broken links.

Tips

• Dreamweaver only checks for the validity of links to documents within your site. If you have external links on your site (links that point to other sites on the Internet), Dreamweaver does not follow those links and make sure that those sites still exist and are reachable . If you need to validate external links, you will need to follow those links manually, in a Web browser.

• You can also check for broken links on just the page you are editing. Choose File > Check Page > Check Links, or press Shift-F8.