One of the main characteristics of Web sites is that they consist of a certain number of pages. They are interconnected by hyperlinks, and it is not uncommon for several such elements to appear on the same page. That is why it is very important that all links are fully functional, otherwise it may happen that certain pages remain unavailable. Of course, this check should be done before the site becomes available to the widest audience, before you place it on your Web server. To make this task as easy as possible, Dreamweaver offers you a function called Link Checker, and in this lesson I will show you how to use it.

If you have created the entire site in Dreamweaver, it is enough to start the Check Links Sitewide function from the Site menu. After that, a new section will appear at the bottom of the screen with a table that includes all broken links. The names of the pages are listed on the left, while in the column called Broken Links you can see what the problem is. If you want to solve it, open the corresponding page with a simple selection and look for the part of the code in which there is an incorrect link. Admittedly, there is an easier way, which boils down to directly entering the appropriate value, but you have to be sure what it is about. Since I don’t know what this text represents, it would be best if I click on the Code button and search the content of the entire page. In this case, it’s not an easy task, but that’s why I’m going to start the Find and Replace function and enter the value I need in this field. If I then click the Find All button, Dreamweaver will show me the complete information. Now it won’t be difficult for me to double-click on the problematic segment and determine its position in the code. As you can see, it is located in the protected part belonging to the template, which means that the same error most likely appears on all pages. On the other hand, this means that this problem can be solved in one go, because Dreamweaver will automatically update the entire content of the site.

I will still go back to Link Checker and check another link. In the right column, you can clearly see that most of the text is missing here, so I will use the search function and precisely determine its location. It seems that it is again a part of the template because a segment is shown on the screen that cannot be changed directly. That’s why I will click on the corresponding template from the list that includes all the files and immediately look for the error on it. It seems to me that it is one of the links from the footer, so in parallel with the graphic display, I will also open the segment where the complete code is located and immediately enter the correct value. The second error is related to the icon on the right, so I will use this opportunity to define a link to contacts instead of a link to a non-existent page – newsletter.

Since I have corrected all the mistakes in this way, it would not be bad to save the changes. So I’ll look for the Save All function in the File menu and wait for Dreamweaver to do its part. The system will automatically change all pages that are related to this template, and if you want to see what it is actually about, click on the Show log option. In this case, a total of 7 pages have been changed, so I can click on the Close button and close this frame.

If I go back to Link Checker after everything and restart the function to check all links, this list should remain completely empty. This means that there are no more broken links on my site and that I can be completely at ease from that point of view.

A completely different problem is represented by the so-called external links, links to external content. Since there are elements like this on my site, it wouldn’t hurt to check them out. That’s why I will select the External Links option from this menu and wait for the complete list to appear on the screen. Now I can check the data displayed in the right column and possibly correct a typo. Unfortunately, with external links there is always the possibility that some of them become problematic because they represent links to content that can change without our knowledge.

The last thing you can check is whether among the files you have prepared for creating the site there are also those that you have not used so far. This is what the function called Orphaned files is for, and I will use this opportunity to look for redundant data. Of course, you can leave them for later, but if you come to the conclusion that you no longer need them, simply delete them.

Since I successfully solved the problems with broken links in this way, I will choose the Close Tab Group option from this menu and thus close the Link Checker.