Forum Discussion

simon_cnhi's avatar
simon_cnhi
Occasional Contributor
3 years ago

Historical posts (pre 2017 so far) no longer link to SmartBear documentation

I'm regularly coming across useful posts by community members, pre 2017 so far, that provide links to SmartBear documentation that would be helpful if only the links work, rather than dumping me on the landing page for "community.smartbear.com".

The workaround is to take the exact text from the hyperlink in the legacy post and copy/paste it into the search bar, at which point the original online document/kb article is listed.

 

Example - post title "test complete recognizing unexpected windows", by "chicks" on 09-22-2011, links to SB documentation "OnUnexpectedWindow", but the link does not click through to the documentation.

 

Is it the intention to fix the broken links in the historical posts?

 

cheers

  • Kitt's avatar
    Kitt
    Regular Contributor
    3 years ago

    I highly doubt that SmartBear would go back through historical posts to update broken hyperlinks for one main reason (other than no time/money/value): older posts have a high potential to be referencing outdated solutions. A solution from 2011 would probably be implemented differently today and the original documentation would have mostly likely been updated as well - so I think the intent is to have you search for more relevant/recent solutions that link to more relevant/recent documentation.   

     

    Not to say that there aren't great solutions from years past that still solve a lot of common issues, I just think after x number of years SmartBear probably archives older posts and disables the hyperlinks so they don't have to deal with the maintenance nightmare and potentially lead clients down a wrong path.