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There is no way to check for broken links in Knowledge Center
Posted Feb 14, 2021
Hi
There is no way to check for broken links.
The post https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115007417707-Managing-Links has a few people asking about it.
The only solution Zendesk gives it to use Google Analytics, But this only "gives you every instance of a customer getting the error message." That is too late!
All links need to be checked manually. This is crazy.
It needs a way to check that a link does not refer to either an archived article or an article that is draft.
I have finally found a third party link checker that has helped a bit, but Zendesk does not actually give a 404 if the article is archived, and if it is draft it prompts to sign in rather than an error.
Even an option to export the published help articles as separate files would be helpful (they could then be put thru something that does check).
23
11 comments
Josh
+1
0
Allison Sargent
+1 on this! Needed this since day 1; it's hard to keep our content up-to-date without a pop-up or some sort of easy way to search by unique URL (to identify the impact removing an article will have on other articles)
GA is not helpful enough to identify the broken links, we need something 'in the moment'
Thanks!
0
Sorin Alupoaie
I am working on an app that enables you to export a list articles and all the links within each article. The broken links & images are automatically detected and highlighted in the export.
I'm also open to any suggestion of improving it from the community here.
It will be released soon, at no cost for all the requests coming from this thread.
You can register for early access here
0
Dave Dyson
Here's a link to the Help Center Exporter in our apps marketplace mentioned by Sorin Alupoaie
0
Josh
Any movement on this?
1
Katarzyna Karpinska
Hi all,
We are aware of this request and logged it as a potential future improvement. However we are not planning any work in this area in the nearest future.
0
Sorin Alupoaie
Josh, the Help Center Manager app will help you find and fix broken links in your Zendesk help center.
0
Olga P
+1
0
Ashley Gordon
Hi Katarzyna Karpinska - please note that it's frankly shocking that this basic functionality wasn't included from the get-go. For a content management system to not be able to track broken links is really disappointing. One of the main tenants of keeping content up to date is being made aware of when a link breaks. It's good to note this as a future improvement, but how can we be sure it isn't going to die in the backlog? Broken links give users a terrible user experience during self-service.
1
Jann DiPaolo
Hi Ashley. I asked about this back in 2021. But the good news is that there is an app called Help Center Manager which does the job very nicely. It also offers various other functions and has an extensive Analytics component.
https://www.swifteq.com/zendesk-help-center-manager
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Michael Addison
Jann DiPaolo, a paid add-on shouldn't be required. A link checker and report should be baked into Zendesk.
A competitor, KnowledgeOwl has this feature.
0