<aside> 💡 There now exists two linkchecker systems - one for email newsletters and one for VIN documents. Below covers the system created for email newsletters.

If you are looking for the linkchecker documentation for VIN documents, it can be found **here.**

</aside>

Summary

• when creating mailings, often large numbers of links are included

• checking these links manually can be time-consuming and error-prone

• we created a tool to automate the checking of links, to provide an extra layer of robustness to sending out mailings

• usage of the tool will generate a Report that includes each link within the mailing, together with a ‘Status’ of the link, as well as a screenshot of the linked page, for eg:

  

How to use👇

1. send your draft email to [email protected]. It can be sent direct from the mailing service or another email address
2. you will receive an email back within ~10 minutes containing a link to your report
3. ensure that you have your VIN VPN installed & connected
4. click the link and you will be taken to the report

Limitations:

• the system was initially set up to process infrequent checking of email newsletters but as the scope has been extended to documents and the number of links within a document can apparently reach into the 100s, we are unsure of at what point it will stop functioning stably. We will start monitoring this
• we can currently process 4 reports of any kind simultaneously

Troubleshooting: