View & Fix Links Page

The View & Fix links shows all the (broken) links on your website.

The default filter is set to show only broken links. So the page might be empty.

The page shows the status of each link, allows rechecking a link and to replace a link.

The details button will bring you to more detailed information about the link and the check, like where it was found.

Filters

In the top section, there are several filters to select.

The numbers reflect the total number of links, only taking into account the setting of the 'Marked Links' filter. The plugin filter shows the number of containers (ignoring the 'Marked links' filter).

Links

That are Broken

Showing pages with are clearly broken, as with a 404 - page not found response or any flavor of server errors (500+)

With a warning

For example links hitting a WAF like cloudflare

With redirects

These are links that needed more than one request to reach the final destination.

With internal changed

These are internal links where the link found in your content does not match the desired format or with a wrong (category) ID's. See here for more information.

With Timeout

Links taking to long to check. The timeout value can be configured in the components configuration (Request Timeout. If the link is reported more then Recheck Count times the link will be reported as broken.

Parked domains

This filter list domains that a possibly hijacked by a domain parking server.

Response codes

This filters on the response by group

2XX : Ok
3XX : Redirect
4XX: Not found or not accessible
5XX: Server error

list of all official response codes, the component uses a few unofficial ones as well.

Link Type

Select on internal or external links

Unchecked protocol

These are links that are not checked because there is no checker for this type of link. These can be unsupported protocols like mailto

set to ignore

Excluded domains or path from the configuration.

Marked links

Explicitly show links that are marked as working.

Plugin type

Select per parser plugin

Mime type

Select per response mime type.

Reported Link Variants

In the main column of the link report, you will find one or more links

the Found link. That is the link exactly has it has been found in the content. That might be an external url or a internal url.
the Internal URL, this is the internal URL as you configured it to appear and unSEFfed when used with the unsef plugin.
the Routed URL. The routed (SEF) internal URL, depending on your Joomla configuration.
the Final link. The link after all redirects. Only shown if different from the other links.
- you might expect a response code 301 or 302 with redirected links. However, the HTTP code is from the last request. So it should be a 20X for a working link or a 4XX or 5XX response code for broken links. If you see a 30X code it's most likely an infinity loop of redirects. This happens for example with firewalls that try to set cookies.

Response Column

Response codes

Each HTTP request has a response code from the remote server. A personal favor is 418 I'm a teapot, but it's not the most useful one.

Between the existing official response codes the component uses some custom values.

Working pages will report a 200 or 206. The latter is partial content, as the checker does not request the full page if possible. The issue with 30X codes is depicted above.

If you are lucky you will see only 20X and 404 pages. However, it's quite common to encounter 403 errors, that most likely a firewall that does not like the checker.

Action buttons

In the Response Column you will find four small action buttons. There can be used to recheck a link or to mark it as 'working' or 'ignore'.

The details button will take you to a page with more information on the link. Where it was found and the log of the checker.

With the Set New Link button you can set a new link to replace in the content.

Below are some examples from the Links menu.

External Link with Redirect

In the default configuration the checker follows redirects and reports the status of the final destination. In this case a 200 - Page found response.

The original link has been redirected to a different but working final link.

These links are selected with the With redirects filter.

If your website has open_basedir restrictions then links are not followed, and you will see a 30X response.

With the option Follow Redirects (found in Checker section of the BLC Component settings) you can also disable following redirects.

Example: Internal link with 200 (OK) response

Correct Internal Link

A correct working internal link. The found is the link found in the content. The routed link is the link the joomla-SEF routes creates

Not Found

A non working link (in this case an internal link). Time to find the correct one and fix it.

These links are selected with the that are broken filter.

Internal With Wrong Category

The link found in the content (an article) has a category that does not match the current one. Depending on you sites configuration this results in a 404 - Page not found. Or the article ends up in the wrong place on your site.

These links are selected with the With internal changed filter.

Working But Partial Content

In the default configuration, the checker request only the first few kilobytes. These request will show up as a 206 - Partial Content response.

As good as a 200 - Found response.

This behavoir can be changed with the option Use Range (found in Checker section of the BLC Component settings)

Working But without Category

The link Found in the content (an article) has no category set. The Internal link shows the corrected one.

These links are selected with the With internal changed filter.

False Positive's

See How to handle False Positive's