Check for broken links

How to get there: Go to your Knowledge Base board → open the actions menu → click Check links.

Scans every article in the board for HTTP links and flags anything that returns a client or server error, or that can't be reached at all. Useful for large imported knowledge bases and any KB that references vendor docs, GitHub issues, or other pages that drift over time.

What it checks

Every http:// or https:// link found inside an article body, regardless of how it was written:

  • HTML anchors: <a href="...">
  • Markdown links: [label](url)
  • Bare URLs sitting in the text

Links are deduplicated per article. Only external links are checked. Internal ProductLift links (to other articles in the same portal) are skipped.

What counts as broken

  • 4xx (Not Found, Forbidden, Gone, etc.) — the page is missing or blocked
  • 5xx (Server Error, Gateway Timeout, etc.) — the target site is misbehaving
  • Connection failed — DNS failure, TLS error, or the host stopped responding
  • Redirects (301/302) are followed up to 3 hops and count as OK if the final URL responds 2xx

Speed and caching

Each unique URL is checked once and the result is cached for 6 hours. That means:

  • Re-scanning right after a scan is essentially free (all cached)
  • If you scan two boards that share a link, the second scan gets that link's status from cache
  • Fixing a link and re-scanning within 6 hours will still show the old status until the cache expires. Wait, or re-scan after the TTL passes.

Review UI

The review modal shows one row per article, ordered so failing articles come first. Each row lists:

  • The article title
  • Total links and how many failed
  • For failed links: the URL, HTTP status code, and a short reason ("404 Not Found", "connection failed", etc.)
  • When that article was last checked

Click any failing URL to open it in a new tab and confirm it's really dead before deleting or updating the article.

There is no auto-fix yet. Open the affected article in the editor and either update the link to the new URL or remove it. Re-run the scan afterwards to confirm.