Broken Link Checker for WordPress
Sometimes, links get broken. A page is deleted, a subdirectory forgotten, a site moved to a different domain. Most likely many of your blog posts contain links. It is almost inevitable that over time some of them will lead to a “404 Not Found” error page. Obviously you don’t want your readers to be annoyed by clicking a link that leads nowhere. You can check the links yourself but that might be quite a task if you have a lot of posts. You could use your webserver’s stats but that only works for local links.
So I’ve made a plugin for WordPress that will check your posts (and pages), looking for broken links, and let you know if any are found.
Download it now! (423 KB)
Features
- Detects links that don’t work and missing images.
- Periodically checks links in posts, pages, comments and the blogroll.
- New and modified entries are checked ASAP.
- Notifies you on the Dashboard if any problems are found.
- Lets you edit all instances of a specific link at once.
- Gives you a list of all links ever posted on your site, with the ability to search and filter it.
- Lets you apply custom CSS styles to broken and removed links.
- Highly configurable.
The broken links show up in the Tools -> Broken Links tab along. If any invalid URLs are found a notification will also show up on the Dashboard widget. To save screen real-estate, the widget can be configured to stay closed most of the time and automatically expand when broken links are detected.
Installation
Install “Broken Link Checker” just like any other WordPress plugin :
- Download the .zip file.
- Unzip.
- Upload the
broken-link-checkerfolder to you/wp-content/pluginsdirectory. - Activate the plugin in the Plugins tab.
Download
broken-link-checker.zip (423 Kb)
Requirements
- WordPress 3.0 or later
- MySQL 4.1 or later
The current version of this plugin is only compatible with WordPress 3.0 and up. If you have an older version of WP, try one of the older releases. Specifically, version 0.8.1 is the last one that’s still compatible with the WP 2.8 branch, and version 0.4.14 is the last one compatible with WP 2.1 – 2.6.x.
It might prevent BLC from detecting broken internal links. External links should still be checked properly, though.
Thanx for the quick reply.
Do you think that if I try it and then deactivate it again (if there was to be a problem) BLC would still function properly?
Marikamitsos
Yes, I believe it would.
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Is it possible to check for broken Youtube videoes on my site or do you know any other plugins which does?
It’s not currently possible, but it is a planned feature for a (distant) future release. I’m not currently aware of any plugins that could check Youtube videos.
I suggest beware the delete broken link / modify link option, i am using 0.81, default, it checked the option who modify the broken link.
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I LOVE this plugin — thank you!!
But, I’ve found that the most recent update is calling some links broken, when they’re perfectly fine. In fact, it lists 63 broken links and images!
I’ve deactivated and reactivated the plugin, but the problem remains. How can I fix this problem? Maybe I could have the old file back, before it was updated?
Thanks,
Laurie
Also — maybe I caused the problem by not deactivating the plugin before I upgraded it? I didn’t realize I was supposed to do that…..but my other blog now shows 295 broken links, which can’t be right….
When you use the WP built-in upgrade function it will automatically deactivate and reactivate the plugin as it upgrades it. So that shouldn’t be a problem.
As for those incorrectly detected links, check their “Details” section, especially the “Log” therein. If you post the details for one or two here, I might be able to figure out why the plugin thinks they’re broken.
You can always download older versions here :
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/broken-link-checker/download/
Thanks for your help! When I click “details”, nothing at all happens….same when I click “Not Broken” or any of the other options…
I’ll try downloading the previous version.
That sounds like it could be a JavaScript problem. Check your browser’s error console for error messages (it’s Tools -> Error Console in FF, other browsers have something similar).
I normally use IE, but couldn’t find the error console there.
So I checked the Error Console in FF. The “Errors” box is blank.
But under “All”, I get many, many warnings. The ones that relate to my blog look like this:
Warning: Error in parsing value for ‘filter’. Declaration dropped.
Source File: http://theadventurouswriter.com/blogwriting/wp-admin/load-styles.php?c=1&dir=ltr&load=dashboard,plugin-install,global,wp-admin&ver=17aa35fdf22036c3f75256fc16b16184
Line: 4
Warning: Unknown pseudo-class or pseudo-element ‘first’.
Source File: http://theadventurouswriter.com/blogwriting/wp-admin/
Line: 0
Warning: Expected ‘]’ to terminate attribute selector but found ‘:’.
Source File: http://theadventurouswriter.com/blogwriting/wp-admin/
Line: 0
Warning: Unknown property ‘border-bottom-left-radius’. Declaration dropped.
Source File: http://theadventurouswriter.com/blogwriting/wp-admin/load-styles.php?c=1&dir=ltr&load=global,wp-admin&ver=4198bec071152ccaf39ba26fd81dcd63
Line: 2
Can you help me get rid of them the errors? I want Link Checker to work again!
Also, can you delete these error messages after you look at them? I don’t want people to see that info…
Thanks for your help,
Laurie
Those are all CSS warnings, which usually only affect how something looks, not how it works. CSS errors wouldn’t prevent the link checker from working.
Maybe you could give me access to your blog’s dashboard so that I can investigate the problem directly? (This is just a suggestion. I know most people would be reluctant to give anyone that kind of access, so I’ll understand if you refuse.)
Hello,
I ‘ve just found a small bug.
If an url contains a dot, it is detected as broken, even if the url is good. An example : http://www.viadeo.com/fr/profile/daniel.roch1
Yes, I’d be fine with giving you access to my WP Dashboard. This is one of my favorite plugins, and I’d do almost anything to get it going again
Maybe Seomix’s bug is part of the problem? Or maybe it’s the whole problem?
Please email me, and I’ll send you my WP Dashboard info…
Thanks,
Laurie
@ Seomix : That false positive has nothing to do with dots. The problem is that the server in question (www.vidaeo.com) implements the HTTP protocol incorrectly. I’ll add a work-around for such buggy servers in the next version (sigh).
Thank you so much for your help — your fix worked!!
It found 2 broken links, which were actually broken….and I love the opportunity to go back and tweak my old blog posts, which is why I love your plugin. That, and how it helps keep me “in good” with Google, of course.
Thanks again — I really appreciate your help.
Laurie
Hmmmm…..maybe now it’s working TOO good. It’s giving me a list of all the broken links from my comments section — from readers who commented on my blog, left their url, and whose blogs are now defunct.
I suppose I could just go in and delete those url’s. Is it worth the time? That is, does Google count the broken url’s in the comments section when determining how “strong” a blog is?
If it’s not worth the time it takes to delete those url’s, is there a way to stop Link Checker from checking the comments section?
Thanks,
L.
Hmm, I imagine broken comment links wouldn’t have much weight since they’re usually nofollow’ed anyway.
At the time, there is no way to stop the plugin from checking comments. Such a feature may be added in a later version.
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I upgraded Broken Link Checker to 0.9.1 and got this error message:
WordPress database error: [Unknown column 'instances.raw_url' in 'field list']
SELECT instances.raw_url FROM wp_blc_instances AS instances JOIN wp_blc_links AS links ON instances.link_id = links.link_id WHERE instances.container_type = ‘post’ AND instances.container_id = 1103 AND links.broken = 1 AND parser_type = ‘link’
In the plugin file: broken-link-checker/includes/containers/post.php is the sql-statement with instances.raw but the table definition of wp_blc_instances contains no field with the name raw_url.
Try this : deactivate the plugin, delete the wp_blc_instances table, then reactivate the plugin. It should recreate the table with the new field(s). You will also need to click the “Re-check all links” button afterwards.
(The plugin should’ve done this automatically when it was upgraded, but apparently something went wrong.)
I’m getting a fatal error on any blog where I respond to the “update” message
What does the error say?
Great plugin! Thank you very much for your work!
Here I want to submit some kind of error of the plugin: Broken Link Checker seems to wrongly treat URLs with CSS classes added. For example look here: http://born66.net/?p=2662 you can see line-through my second link with word ‘Wyborcza’ – though the link is working and valid. Main reason is simply this: my link has ‘class=”html”‘ attribute. Links without CSS addons are checked good …
Please – make some corrects to your usefull plugin.
Thank you!