Issue
In Liferay DXP attempting to publish content (pages, assets, or files) with broken links results in a "missing page reference" issue during publication. Also, even updating or creating basic web content is not possible with dead links (relative links). Or when trying to publish content with an external link as HTTPS, the publishing fails:
Resolution
If you would like the validator to ignore these missing references (i.e., allowing broken links to be included in the publishing event), then you can perform the following steps:
In Liferay DXP 7.1+
- Navigate to Control Panel > Configuration > System Settings > Platform > Infrastructure
- On the left hand menu, find the option for Export/Import, and select it
- Uncheck the corresponding "Validate ..." reference type selection, and Save.
In Liferay DXP 7.0
- Navigate to Control Panel > Configuration > System Settings > Web Experience > Search for Import/Export Service.
- Go to Export/Import Service and disable the desired "Validate ..." reference type configuration, and Save.
Note: The changes in the resolution are system-wide changes. For a brief description about each of the available settings:
- Links to documents (in the document library) are validated by “Validate File Entries”
- Links to web content feeds are validated by “Validate Journal Feed References”
- Links to the portal’s virtual hosts and pages are validated by “Validate Layout References”
Additional Information
For DXP 7.1 Fix Pack 12 and below and DXP 7.0 Fix Pack 86 and below, only the “Validate Layout References” configuration is present, which only applies to some types of page and site references (and not references for documents, other files, or web content feeds). The current behavior and additional settings were introduced with the implementation of LPS-92133.
A fourth, similar setting called “Validate Missing References” was later introduced (via the LPS-108453 changes, in 7.0 DE-91, 7.1 DXP-17, and 7.2 DXP-5) that validates links included within publishing/importing events with sites/pages that reference each other.
For more information about resolving the "missing page reference" issue without disabling validation for links, see this article.