Is there any widget/ spider to identify broken links ?

[Manon Colas]

I would like to know if there is any widget/spider to identify broken links in confluence without running over the entire website manually to identify them.

[Diego]

Hello there!

As I understand, you need to identify broken links in Confluence. In Confluence, we have two types of links:

• Soft links
• Hard links

Soft links are the ones you create by using the insert link feature. Hard links are the ones that the URL was simply pasted over in the page editor.

After this, we also have the distinction between external and internal links.

Internal links are to pages within Confluence and can be linked using Confluence linking feature.

External links are exactly that. Links that point to outside of Confluence. Those are little bit trickier to track.

Here is some explanation on how to use links in Confluence:

Links - Confluence Server 6.15.x

Insert Links and Anchors - Confluence Cloud

If you are on Confluence Server, you can check these KBs on how to validate links:

How to validate links - Confluence Server

Some attachments or links are no longer accessible after server migration

Also, could you clarify a few points for us:

1. Are you on Confluence Cloud or Server?
2. If on Server, which version are you running?
3. Have you already identified any link that is broken within your instance?
4. Are you referring to internal links or external links?

Looking forward to your reply!

[Bassil Aleter]

Thank you Diego for the information. regarding your questions, i really don't know whether it's on confluence cloud or server, i've just started and exploring it. Here is a link (https://humanitarian.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/imtoolbox) so you might be able to know the settings. Some external and internal links doesn't work sometimes either because teh source had changed or a document has been deleted so we are trying to quickly identify and correct these links.  On relevant matter, Could we ask questions through emails or answers is only through the community platform here ? Thank you very much Diego!

[Diego]

Thanks for replying!

Well, the link you sent us indicates that your instance is Confluence Cloud.

Currently, there is no direct approach to automatically check for broken links within Confluence. The most accurate tool currently is under:

Space Settings > Content Tools > Undefined pages

There ,you should be able check pages that have been linked from within Confluence but do not exist.

A long time ago, a suggestion to implement a link validator in Confluence Cloud was raised, but was not added to the plans:

CONFCLOUD-20149 | Create a tool to allow admin automatically validates links in Confluence

With this in mind, I raised this new feature request:

CONFCLOUD-65867 | Implement an internal and external link validator

The best course of action, would be to vote and watch the new report. Voting increases the report visibility and watching will keep you up to date with everything there.

Looking forward to your reply!

Edit: Currently, replying to threads must be done via Community Portal. Email replies are not implemented. Thanks for asking!

[Nicolas Casel]

Just a quick note: the link given by Diego to 'How to validate links - Confluence Server' with url https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/confluence-how-to-validate-links-952603062.html is not valid any more ; correct url is now:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/confkb/confluence-how-to-validate-links-952603062.html