Don't break links when changing pages
Renaming or removing a page is easy; the trap is everything that still points at it. Menus, footers and links buried in your text all keep aiming at the old address, and each one becomes a dead end for a visitor — and a black mark with search engines. The rule is simple: never change a page's address without updating its links in the same session.
How it works
- Get your access prompt. Log in to bernard, open your site, and copy the prompt from Edit with AI (it contains a key that works for 12 hours).
- Paste it into your AI — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, whichever you already use — then ask for the rename or removal using the prompt above, so the links travel with it.
- Approve. The AI sends back a preview link plus a list of the links it changed. Click a few of them on the preview — especially the menu — then press Approve.
Links travel with the page
Whether you're renaming a page, removing one, or moving a section to a different page, treat the links as part of the job. Ask the AI to list every link it changed: that list is your checklist for the preview, and it tells you immediately if something was missed. One thing the AI can't fix is the outside world — if other websites or your social media profiles link to the old address, update those yourself or keep the old page in place pointing visitors to the new one.
If you're the AI doing this: before renaming or removing any page, read every page on the site and find each link to it — navigation, footers, and links inside body text. Update them all in the same draft, mind relative paths when files move, and end your handover with an explicit list of which links you changed on which pages. If a page is being removed and something still needs to point somewhere, ask the owner where, rather than leaving a dead link or inventing a destination.
The prompt
“Rename [old page] to [new page] — and update every link anywhere on my site that points at it, including the menu. List the links you changed so I can check them on the preview.”
The [bracketed] parts are yours to fill in. First time? Log in to bernard → your site → Edit with AI → copy your access prompt, paste that into your AI first, then ask the above.
Questions people ask
- Why do links break when I rename or delete a page?
- Other pages still point at the old address — the menu, the footer, links inside your text. Rename or remove a page without updating them and visitors hit a dead end. The fix is to change the page and its links in the same go.
- How do I find every link to a page before removing it?
- Ask the AI to check every page of your site for links to the one you're changing — it reads them all and updates each one. Asking it to list what it changed gives you a checklist for the preview.
- What if the AI misses a link?
- Nothing goes live until you approve the preview, so click around it first — especially the menu and the pages that used to link to the old one. And if a broken link slips through, bernard keeps a full year of history, so it's always fixable.