Broken Link Checker for WordPress

Notice: This plugin has been transferred to ManageWP. I am no longer working on it. Please direct any feedback to the new developer. See the plugin homepage for more information.

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.

Features

  • Detects links that don’t work, missing images, deleted YouTube videos and other problems.
  • Periodically checks links in posts, pages, comments, custom fields 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.

Download

broken-link-checker.zip (412 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.

    Installation

    Install “Broken Link Checker” just like any other WordPress plugin :

    1. Download the .zip file (see below).
    2. Unzip.
    3. Upload the broken-link-checker folder to you /wp-content/plugins directory.
    4. Activate the plugin in the Plugins tab.
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    2,582 Responses to “Broken Link Checker for WordPress”

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    10. Dürrbi says:

      While activiating the Plugin i get this Output-String at the page:

      SELECT COUNT(*) FROM ( SELECT 0 FROM xxxxx_blc_links AS links JOIN duerrbiblog_blc_instances AS instances ON links.link_id = instances.link_id WHERE ( instances.parser_type IN (‘link’, ‘image’, ‘url_field’, ‘metadata’) ) AND ( instances.container_type IN (‘dummy’, ‘page’, ‘post’, ‘comment’, ‘blogroll’) ) AND ( ( broken = 1 ) ) GROUP BY links.link_id) AS foo

      Further in the Settings-Page is shown, that the database table were outdated (existing version 0, new version 5)

      I’m using Wirdpress 3.3.2

    11. Jānis Elsts says:

      Does this this happen only once, or all the time? The message should go away once the plugin has updated the database.

    12. Dürrbi says:

      When deacticvating and activiating again, the message returns.

    13. Dürrbi says:

      If i try to save the options i get

      “Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /www/htdocs/xxxxxx/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/broken-link-checker/core/core.php:384) in /www/htdocs/xxxxx/wordpress/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 866”

    14. Edmund says:

      My site is not developed by WordPress. Can I still use this plugin to my site?

    15. Jānis Elsts says:

      @Dürrbi:

      Sounds like there might be a problem with the database upgrade routine. Click the “Show debug info” link on the settings page and check the installation log for any error messages.

      @Edmund:

      No, you can’t use WordPress plugins on a non-WordPress site.

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