Using Conductor Website Monitoring

Conductor Website Monitoring is a tool that helps you understand the overall health of your website after it goes live. It continuously scans your site and flags technical issues that can impact user experience, accessibility, and search performance.

For web editors, this is one of the easiest ways to identify problems like broken links, missing metadata, and structural issues without needing technical expertise. Instead of manually checking pages one by one, Conductor surfaces issues in one place so you can prioritize what to fix.

Think of it as a routine checkup for your website. It helps you maintain quality over time, especially as content changes, pages are added, or links are updated.

About Conductor Segments

A segment in Conductor is a defined group of pages, usually based on a specific site, folder, or URL pattern. Segments allow you to isolate and monitor only your site’s content instead of seeing data for the entire university.

This is important because Stony Brook’s web ecosystem is large and decentralized. Without segments, it would be difficult to understand which issues actually belong to your site.

When you submit a site cutover request, part of MARCOM’s workflow is to create a Conductor Website Monitoring segment for your new site. These are labeled New Site – [Your Site Name].

Once your segment is set up, Conductor will begin tracking only the pages within your site. This allows you to see issues specific to your site and focus your efforts on what you control.

If you do not see your segment, or if you want to create a custom one (for example, to monitor a subsection of your site), you can follow the walkthrough below to define a segment based on your site’s URL structure.

See Conductor’s documentation for more segment options.

Reporting on Your Segments

Once your segment is set up, the next step is using it to identify and fix issues.

Within Conductor, each segment can be viewed on the dashboard or filtered within the Issues section. From there, you can explore different types of problems affecting your site.

While Conductor tracks many technical factors, the most useful areas for web editors are:

• Broken links (pages linking to URLs that no longer exist)
• Links with redirects (links that send users to a different URL before reaching the final destination)
• Missing or duplicate page titles and/or meta descriptions

These directly impact user experience, accessibility, and search visibility, making them the highest priority to review regularly.

Below are instructions on running and exporting a report. See Conductor’s knowledge base for a comprehensive overview of their monitoring report options.

Broken links are one of the most common and important issues to address. They occur when a page links to a destination that no longer exists or has been moved without a redirect.

From a user perspective, broken links create frustration and reduce trust. From a technical perspective, they signal poor site quality to search engines and can negatively impact performance.

Conductor makes it easy to identify these issues by:

• Showing which pages contain broken links
• Counting how many broken links exist per page
• Allowing you to export a full report for deeper review

The exported spreadsheet provides a detailed view of each issue, including the source page and the broken URL. This allows you to systematically work through and resolve issues rather than guessing where problems exist.

How to Use the Report

The broken links report will have columns and data like this:

Report Definitions

Here’s how to interpret the key columns and use them to fix issues efficiently:

• FULL URL is the page on your site where the broken link exists. This is your starting point. Open this page in Modern Campus CMS to locate and fix the issue.
• LINK URL is the actual link that is broken. This is what needs to be updated, replaced, or removed.
• STATUS CODE tells you what kind of problem is occurring. This helps determine how to fix it:
  • 404 means the page does not exist. The link should be updated or removed.
  • 401 means the page is restricted (for example, a Google Doc that requires permissions). Replace it with a publicly accessible version or remove the link.
• LINK TYPE indicates whether the link is internal (within your site) or external (outside your site). 
  • Internal links should almost always be fixed.
  • External links should be evaluated. If the resource is still relevant, find the correct URL; if not, remove it.
• LABEL is the clickable text shown to users. This helps you quickly locate the link within the page content.
• IMPORTANCE is a relative score assigned by Conductor. Higher values typically indicate pages with more visibility or impact. Use this to prioritize fixes if you have a large number of issues.
• SEGMENTS confirms which site the issue belongs to. This is mainly useful if you manage multiple sites.

Applying This to the Sample Data

Looking at the examples:

Broken URL: External Link to SBM Site with Status 404

A page like /support-resources/contact.html linking to an external URL with a 404 status means that link is broken and should be updated or removed.

Broken URL: Google Docs Link with Status 401

A link to a Google Doc returning a 401 status indicates a permissions issue. In this case, users cannot access the document, so you should either update sharing settings, replace the link with a public resource, or ignore the line in the report if you want the document to stay restricted.

Broken URL: Internal Link to SBU Site with Status 404

An internal link returning a 404 (such as a help guide or component page) usually means the page was moved, renamed, or deleted during migration. These should be fixed immediately by updating the link to the correct page.

Broken URL: Placeholder Link with Status 404

A URL like /components/banners/Link 1 suggests a malformed or placeholder link. These often come from copied components or incomplete edits and should be cleaned up.

Issues Management

Conductor doesn’t function like Silktide where you can selectively suppress individual issues. It’s designed to reflect what exists on the live site, so if a link returns a 404, it will continue to surface as an issue.

That said, you have a few practical options depending on intent:

Best practice: fix or neutralize the link

Always fix or remove a link whenever possible. If it’s a demo or placeholder (like /components/banners/Link 1), the cleanest approach is to update it so it’s no longer a broken link:

• Replace it with a real destination
• Remove the link entirely
• Convert it to non-clickable text (no <a> tag)

This keeps your report clean and avoids confusing users.

Use a safe placeholder URL

If you need something to look like a link for demonstration purposes:

• Point it to a real, harmless page (e.g., the component index or a general page)
• Or use # cautiously (not ideal for accessibility, but better than a 404 in some cases)

Accept and document

If the link must remain as-is for a valid reason (like permission-locked Google Doc 401 errors), treat it as a known exception:

• Leave it in the report
• Ignore it during cleanup cycles

Treat all links like real content and avoid broken URLs entirely. Even if they’re “just examples,” Conductor, and users, see them as real links.

Getting Alerts

Conductor Website Monitoring can notify you when new issues are detected on your site, helping you stay ahead of problems instead of discovering them later during routine checks.

Alerts can be configured to send notifications via email, Slack, or Microsoft Teams, depending on how you prefer to receive updates. This is especially useful for catching high-impact issues like broken links or widespread metadata problems soon after they appear.

When setting up alerts, you can control both what you’re notified about and how often you’re notified. This allows you to tailor alerts to your workflow and avoid unnecessary noise.

For example, you may want:

• Immediate alerts for critical issues like broken links
• Less frequent summaries for lower-priority items like metadata improvements

Pro Tip: If alerts are too frequent or too broad, they can become easy to ignore. A more targeted setup ensures that when you do receive a notification, it’s something worth acting on.

In the walkthrough below, you’ll see how to configure alerts based on issue type and sensitivity, as well as how to adjust notification frequency to match your needs. See Conductor’s knowledge base for a full guide on configuring monitoring alerts.

Conductor Website Monitoring gives you a clear, ongoing view of your site’s health so you can catch issues early and keep your content accurate, accessible, and reliable. By using segments to focus on your site, reviewing reports regularly, and addressing high-impact issues like broken links first, you can maintain a strong user experience without needing deep technical expertise. Over time, these small, consistent updates make a meaningful difference in how your site performs and how users experience it.