Blugold Insider Cleanup

Last Updated

As a product of the recent web redesigns and the consequent data recategorization and migration, many departments have expressed that much of their content on Insider contains links to outdated URLs. Learning & Technology Services utilizes a tool for finding these broken links in Sharepoint pages and uploaded documents, providing a list of all broken links and their locations within a department site.

As an optional service, the Web Content Stewards at LTS can remove or update the broken links on your site. Alternatively, we can provide this list for your own maintenance purposes. Detailed below are the steps taken by the Web Content Stewards in removing or updating broken links on a Sharepoint site.


Process


  1. Request a spreadsheet of broken links for an Insider site collection from the SharePoint Administrator via the LTS Help Desk.

  2. Analyze content and sort into categories. A distinct process for fixing the broken links in each category is then defined.
    NOTE: Certain types of content and some specific URL patterns fall into designated exception categories listed at the end of this article. Anything in these categories will be ignored during the cleanup process.

  3. Find and open the document containing a broken link identified in the Item URL column.
    NOTE: If you see a 503 error with a broken link starting with https://share.uwec.edu/, that means that the tool is marking the share link as a broken link. These can be ignored.
    Item URL

  4. Find the broken link within the document identified in the Broken Link URL column of the spreadsheet.
    broken Link URL

  5. Determine the best way to fix the broken link. Using cmd/control+f is an easy way to find specific text in a document.

  6. Once the broken link is located and the best course of action for fixing the link determined, fix the link by removing it or updating it to a current link. 
    NOTE: Stewards will attempt to find an updated link to the same content, but links to content that no longer exists will be removed and labeled accordingly.  Content that falls into an Exception Category noted below will be ignored.

  7. After the link is fixed, add a note in the Status column explaining how the link was fixed (e.g. Updated, Removed), including the Insider document link, broken link URL, updated URL (if applicable), and any other notes about the link. This information is recorded for archival purposes.

Exception Categories

  • Newsletters
  • Links leading to Qualtrics surveys
  • Permissions-based sites (e.g. https://share.uwec.edu)