Forum Discussion

torus's avatar
torus
Contributor
2 years ago

Tired of broken links to solutions existing in the answers to questions.

TestComplete question forum needs to do a better job at not breaking links. A lot of questions reference answers given in older posted questions. However, the old posted question no longer exists so there is no solution. This is a quite frequent occurrence in the Question/Answer forum. 

 

just one of many examples:

https://community.smartbear.com/t5/TestComplete-Questions/How-to-Execute-command-line-utilities-from-within-a-testcomplete/td-p/69289 

Command Line
Desktop Testing
Keyword Tests
Mobile Testing
Script Tests
web testing
  • rraghvani's avatar
    rraghvani
    Champion Level 3
    2 years ago

    I've come across the same issues in the past. If I do come across a post that has broken links, I will usually read through the entire post, picking out various key words that will help in my search later.

    Doing an internet search for those key words usually leads me to the exact or similar topic on TestComplete Documentation.

     

    For example, searching for "TestComplete WScript.Shell", I get results that refers to https://support.smartbear.com/testcomplete/docs/reference/program-objects/wshshell/index.html and within that document, there's references to https://support.smartbear.com/testcomplete/docs/testing-with/advanced/using-external-functions/running-powershell-scripts.html - it has all the information I require.

    • torus's avatar
      torus
      Contributor
      2 years ago

      ha! You weren't kidding. He did magically appear ğŸ™‚. Thanks Marsha_R 

  • D0UG's avatar
    D0UG
    Community Manager
    2 years ago

    torus thanks for flagging this. The team and I will be taking a look at the community content and will try to place redirects where it makes sense. Also, in the future we'll be putting in a submission form for folks to be able to report broken links and other bugs as they come up.

  • torus's avatar
    torus
    Contributor
    2 years ago

    Most of the time the TestComplete questions forum is very good. But when the question you have is a question that has already been asked in the question forum, yet the answer to that question is contain in a link that is broken, it makes the post useless. It is work and struggle that someone has already gone through and the answer has been lost. And links to other questions within the forum are more often than not unfortunately broken. I'm not sure why the url for the question gets moved around. And unfortunately, in google searches, the question in the forum with the broken link is unfortunately the one that most often comes up first ... I guess because it is a more recent post.

  • Marsha_R's avatar
    Marsha_R
    Moderator
    2 years ago
    The links to topics get broken because the website site has been redesigned over the years and things were moved around.

    The searches that rraghvani described are what a lot of us use. You can also help others by letting the admins know when you find one of those links.
    • torus's avatar
      torus
      Contributor
      2 years ago

      okay, thanks Marsha_R . That helps to explain the broken links. Hopefully all of the website redesign is in the past. 

       

      Question: How do you let admins know when you have found a broken link?