Dreamweaver CS6: The Missing Manual

Find and Fix Broken Links

Broken links are inevitable. If you delete a file from your site, move a page or a graphic outside Dreamweaver, or simply type an incorrect path name to a file, you may end up with broken links and missing graphics. In the B.D. era (Before Dreamweaver), you could fix such problems only by methodically examining every link on every page in your site. Fortunately, Dreamweaver’s link-checking features automate the process.

Note

In this context, a link doesn’t mean just a hyperlink connecting one page to another. Dreamweaver checks links to external files, such as PNGs, GIFs, and JPEGs that reside in different folders, external CSS style sheets, and JavaScript files. For example, if a graphic is missing or isn’t in the place your page specifies, Dreamweaver reports a broken link.

Finding Broken Links

Dreamweaver’s Check Links Sitewide command scans an entire site’s worth of files, and reports all the links and paths that don’t lead to a file. (It’s one of Dreamweaver’s site management features, meaning that you have to set up a local site before you can use this command; see Setting Up a Site (in Depth) for instructions.) Note that Dreamweaver checks only links and paths within the local site folder; it doesn’t check links that lead to other people’s sites (see the Note on Note for a tool that can help with that annoying chore).

Tip

If your local site contains a lot of pages, you may not want to check links in one or more folders whose pages you know have no broken ...