How a pre-deploy build step can catch broken links before they go live
Most development teams audit broken links only after a site is already live, meaning faulty links can remain public for weeks before anyone acts. A more effective approach is to integrate link-checking directly into the build pipeline as a blocking gate, scanning static output files before deployment rather than crawling the live site afterward. This method distinguishes between internal broken links, which are treated as build-failing bugs, and external dead links, which trigger warnings but do not block a release. Checking files on disk also eliminates network latency and CDN-related delays, making the process faster than post-deploy crawling. To avoid hammering external servers on every commit, results can be cached by URL and refreshed only after a set expiry window, such as one week.
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