Is there a systematic approach to dealing with broken links on Drupal.org?

Hi - Lisa has noted on the other issue why all of the links were broken.

There is nothing like that, as far as I know, but I am going to move this to the webmasters queue as they'd know better.

There is currently no way that I know of for us to automatically check for broken links.

I did find this module by hass http://drupal.org/project/linkchecker that might work.

+1

There's nothing systematic, but there's nothing stopping us from using something like TotalValidator Pro software to check for broken links. I'm running a report on the /community-initiatives section right now. I'll create an issue w/ all the broken links. Regular checks for broken links should be part of the overall content strategy.

I think a Drupal-based solution might be more efficient. We are already logging all 404 errors, so it should be easy to show the referrerrs of such 404s in a view.

hass' module does this for external links, which I find less important.

killes, an automated solution for finding broken links would be super. :)

I personally think broken external links should definitely be found and fixed too, because a broken link is frustrating and gives the impression we don't maintain our content on d.o.

I am of the opinion that there shouldn't be external links on d.o. Since it is the No. 1. site about Drupal, why would you link to an external site? :)

• groups.drupal.org is an external site.
• api.drupal.org is an external site.
• php.net is an external site.
• The maintainers' blogs are external sites.

Removing links to all those would seriously devalue drupal.org.

killes, there's def some external links that we need to include and maintain e.g. gnu.org, organizations/companies in the marketplace, links out to showcase sites etc.

There's not many external links in the grand scheme of things, but links do change and I'd like us to be able to fix them before someone else finds them. :)

@pillarsdotnet : I've in now way suggested to remove links, please don't make such statements.

I've created a view at

http://groups.scratch.drupal.org/admin/reports/dblog/local_404s

This shows the pages that refer to local pages that were not found.

There is only one entry pointing to https://drupal.org/node/948918

This view uses views_grouby and views_watchdog. views_groupby isn't strictly neccessary.

The solution is somewhat inconvenient since this view would need to be installed on all subsites.

However, we'll shortly have a logging server which will collect log data from all servers and I think we could integrate this there.

We could deploy this until then.

I'm having trouble reconciling these two statements:

#7

I am of the opinion that there shouldn't be external links on d.o. Since it is the No. 1. site about Drupal, why would you link to an external site? :)

#10

@pillarsdotnet : I've in now way suggested to remove links, please don't make such statements.

Two possible interpretations come to mind:

1. The :) emoticon indicates that the preceding statement was meant in jest or sarcasm.

2. Although existing external links should not be removed, neither should additional external links be added.

I would like clarification, please. Is it acceptable or unacceptable for me to continue sprinkling my issues postings with links to external sites such as api.drupal.org, php.net, and wikipedia?

And if (any or some or most) new external links should be discouraged, may we please document this policy somewhere?

And just for clarification, I am painfully aware that in less than a month, all of my issue links to the 8.x section of api.drupal.org will turn into 404's.

I've created a view at

http://groups.scratch.drupal.org/admin/reports/dblog/local_404s

Sounds great!

(...clickety...drupal/drupal...clickety...)

Would someone be so kind as to direct me to the tutorial page that explains how one might obtain permission to view such content?

You are totally free to add external links as you see fit.

From the context of the topic Drupal on drupal.org, I personally think that there aren't many external sites that would have material that's worth linking to. The sites you listed are of course exceptions to that general rule (although I don't think of api.d.o as external).

I've sent you user/pass for that site.

although I don't think of api.d.o as external

The Local image input filter does.

Besides our Showcase forum and /success-story pages, Projects often have links to sponsors, off-site documentation*, and demos.

*yes, it would be nice to have all documentation here, but it's not a requirement.

killes could you send me a password to login with .. thx!

Logging in on groups.scratch.drupal.org doesn't work for me either, and I cannot request a new password, since the site knows "kiamlaluno" as username, but it doesn't know my current email.
Is there a way to get a new password?

Here's a screenshot, there really isn't much to see.

The path should be changed to be non-administrative so that documentation contributors can check for and fix broken links.

Got a suggestion for a path?

Should we start /webmasters?

It would also be interesting to see what the external broken link report looks like. Will it only report on nodes that contain broken links? cos ... unfortunately, there links hardcoded on the landing pages too.

There's already views in code for the docs team to http://drupal.org/documentation/manage

How about just /404s?

And a link should be added to the "Contributor Links" block, I think.

Closing old issues. Please re-open if needed.