Domain name changed, all inline links say "Can't find link"

Question

Hi Community,

I raised a support ticket on this, but maybe one of you gan give me advice even faster.

We changed the URL of our Confluence and Jira Sites today. The redirection of links works fine as described in the Atlassian documentation. But now all links with inline view (we have thousands of those and need the display view for a smooth documentation structure) say "Can't find link". No word in the documentation about that severe impact on the whole Confluence-Look-and-feel after a domain name change.

Is there kind of a batch job for changing all the links from the old domain name to the new domain name so that the original link view will be restored?

Thanks for your help and best regards,
Jakob

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

You say "we just copy&paste a page link in the editor " - yes, that's the whole point, you're not creating system-aware links, you're creating static links, which won't resolve to the new place applications have moved to.

Glad you've got it sorted though, hacking the database is the easiest thing you can do with static links.

Jakob B_ · Answer

Hi Nic, thank you for your answer. Honestly I didn't exactly get the point. What we did (and always do) when linking to othere pages within our Confluence site: we just copy&paste a page link in the editor or use the /"Insert a link" function and serach for the target page via key words. That's how it should be done, isn't it?

HOWEVER - the problem has been solved by the support team in the meantime:

".... i have just updated the links from database side"

Best regards, Jakob

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

This looks like your writers have been entering static links, instead of using macros that use the application links to point to a linked application.

They have been entering things like HTTP://asite.atlassian.net/some/page/on/site. It doesn't matter that the URL leads to a linked application site, it's static reference.

So, when the URL for the site pointed to changes, Jira and Confluence don't know that, and they carry on presenting the same thing the author entered.  You won't have this problem if your authors used dynamic links (instead of https://a.atlassian.net/jira/browse/ABC-123, use the jira macro with the parameter ABC-123, and inside Confluence, use link:[(space:)page name])

Unfortunately, there's no easy search and replace in Confluence, you'll need to find or write an app to do that.