When managing large websites, you occasionally need to verify that all links lead where they should-especially after major configuration changes. While you can manually click through links on smaller sites, it becomes much more challenging for older, more extensive projects.

There are several tools available for link testing, each with its own pros and cons. Here’s a quick look at some of them.

wget

You likely already have wget installed, making it the easiest place to start:

Check links with wget
wget -o /tmp/wget.log -nv -r -p http://example.com

The /tmp/wget.log file will contain error messages. While the log itself isn’t the easiest to parse, wget is the fastest way to catch issues if your system has a mechanism (like email alerts) for critical errors.

linkchecker

You can run it like this:

Check links with linkchecker
linkchecker -t3 --no-warnings http://example.com

I didn’t really like this tool-it was incredibly slow, even on a fairly small site.

linklint

Of the three, this one has the most unusual syntax, but it’s worth learning as it offers the most features.

Check links with linklint
linklint -error -warn -xref -forward -out report.txt -net -http -host example.com /@

It’s fast enough and generates clear, readable reports.