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Configure How Acrolinx Checks for Broken URLs

  • Updated

Warning

Acrolinx has started to phase out support for this configuration option. But don’t worry! We've replaced them with Targets. If you have Targets enabled, you have an easier way to check for broken URLs. Visit Correctnessto learn about how Acrolinx now handles link checking.

You might also want to look at our Sunset Policy.

You can use Acrolinx to check the validity of the URLs you use in your content.

When you check your content with an Acrolinx Integration, Acrolinx visits the URL to see if the URL is still valid. URLs that aren't valid appear as Style issues.

You can use Acrolinx to check for URLs in the following formats:

  • URLs that you write in the text. For example:

    Visit our website http://www.acrolinx.com for more information.

    Tip

    You can check URLs in all XML attributes except URLs to namespaces or document types.

  • URLs that you include as attributes of an HTML or XML tag. For example:

    Visit our <A HREF="http://www.acrolinx.com"> website </A>

Visit our website at <xref format="html" href="http://www.acrolinx.com" scope="external"></xref>

    Note

    Acrolinx won't highlight the attribute when you click on the URL issue card in the Sidebar.

How Does Acrolinx Check for Broken URLs?

Let's dive into how Acrolinx looks for and finds broken URLs.

When you run a check, Acrolinx finds the URLs in your content according to statuses. For example, 'Page not found'.

Acrolinx grabs the HTTP header information from each new URL and saves the URL in a cache that's stored on the Acrolinx Platform. Acrolinx saves each URL in the cache with a timestamp of the last check and the validity of the URL.

Acrolinx reviews the URL cache every 5 minutes to see if there are any URLs due for rechecking. You can set the default time interval for checking the URLs. The default time interval for checking a URL in the cache is every 12 hours. Acrolinx rechecks and URLs that are older than this time interval, and updates the timestamp and status information.

When you check, Acrolinx searches the cache for URLs that it validated in previous checks. If Acrolinx finds a match in the cache, Acrolinx looks at the URL's validation information. If the status says that the URL is invalid, Acrolinx passes the status information to the Acrolinx Integration as a Style issue.

How to Turn On Checking for Broken URLs

Tip

If you're on an Acrolinx Private Cloud 35469215 instance and are interested in these configurations, contact us and we'll set them for you!

If you're a Standard Stack user, you can edit the coreserver.properties from the configuration directory. Depending on your installation, your path might look like this:

<config directory>/server/bin/coreserver.properties.

Configuration Steps for Standard Stack

  1. Open the coreserver.properties.

  2. Add the following property:

    enableLinkChecker=true

  3. Click Save and restart your Acrolinx Platform.

Here’s a list of additional properties you might want to use:

Property

Description

linkChecker.flagRedirects=false

Don't highlight redirected URLs.

The default value is true.

linkChecker.maxWaitTimeInMs

The maximum amount of time that Acrolinx spends checking URLs in one check.

The default value is 1000 milliseconds.

Acrolinx Integrations can't display the results until it validates all the URLs or that the maximum wait time is exceeded.

For example, linkChecker.maxWaitTimeInMs=30000

linkChecker.refreshIntervalInMin

How often Acrolinx rechecks each URL in the URL cache.

The default value is every 720 minutes (12 hours) after the URL was last checked.

For example, linkChecker.refreshIntervalInMin=60

linkChecker.maxCacheSize

The maximum number of URLs that the cache can have before the oldest URLs get overwritten.

For example, linkChecker.maxCacheSize=100000