Link Validator Incorrectly Reports URL Fragments (a.ka. Internal Page References)

[jvarney5]

When using the link validator in a course with URLs containing fragments to jump students to specific locations in the syllabus (similar to https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Getting-Started/Introduction/ta-p/1285#up-next-in-lesson-1-accoun...), the link validator reports the link as "Non-existent content referenced in this resource." This error does not occur for Pages.

In the image below, the link in the bottom-right corner is displayed when hovering over the second result. The course ID is the same and I confirmed that there is an element in the syllabus with id="taxreturn".

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi @jvarney5 ...

Those "fragments" are actually called "anchors" in HTML language.  See this site for an example:

How to Add an Anchor Link to Jump to a Specific Part of a Page (w3docs.com)

On the page in question within the course, are you sure that the anchor links are working correctly and that the HTML code is correct?  If so, I wonder if you could just ignore those error messages you are seeing when using the link validator?

Keep us posted...thanks!

[paul_fynn]

On a similar note @jvarney5 we store content in central sites that are cascaded to lower level course and community sites through linking and iframing. We also have genre specific sites where students are members of both sites and have access independently to each of the two sites, with some content from one nested in the other.

Whilst students can clearly access these within the course sites that they are cascaded to, again these show up as '

Links to other courses in this resource may not be accessible by the students in this course

This is a bit of a fundamental for us, and in a web based environment we want to be able to reuse content in different locations without having to load and manage it multiple times. Currently for us the 'Links may not be accessible' message represents a false positive (and one that appears in bulk across our sites) diminishing it's value ....

[ColtonSwapp]

Hello @jvarney5 

Thanks for posting about this in the Canvas Community! 

I have come across this a few times. It seems that when the link validator reports the link as "Non-existent content referenced in this resource." it is because sometimes those links are flagged as unresponsive and/or are inaccessible by Canvas servers.  However, from what I have seen, they should still work for students. 

The link validator is a great tool for checking the health of overall links in your course, but sometimes it will flag things like this unfortunately. 

-Colton