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”

    1. […] ? On ne peut pas vérifier cela manuellement chaque semaine. Heureusement, le plugin Broken Links Checker (créé en 2007) va faire ce travail à votre place ! Une fois installé, il va scanner […]

    2. […] Broken Link Checker – čím dlhšie stránku vlastníte, tým viac je možné, že niektoré staršie linky už nebudú fungovať – stránka je premiestnená, neexistuje, alebo sa jednoducho len niečo blbé vyskytlo. Plugin kontroluje zlé linky, vedúce z vášho webu. Nemusíte sa teda obávať, že by bol čitateľ presmerovaný na 404 stránku, čo by mohlo vyznieť pre vás dosť nepríjemne, hoci za to nemôžete. Jednoducho link len “odliknete” a je to. […]

    3. […] No a los enlaces rotos dentro de tu sitio. Si el punto anterior es importante éste también. Mucho cuidado con este punto ya que puedes perder mucha credibilidad a la hora de posicionar en google tu sitio. Yo por ejemplo, utilizo para este sitio un plugin para wordpress muy bueno en este sentido y que te ayuda al 100%: Broken Link Checker […]

    4. […] Broken Link Checker (v. 1.5.5) by Janis Elsts. […]

    5. […] Download plugina | Posjetite autorovu web stranicu […]

    6. […] Broken Link Checker by Janis Elsts is one of the most useful WordPress plugins around. […]

    7. hedera says:

      I’m trying to rebuild lifering.org on our test site liferingrecovery.org; I built the test site by copying the production site and installing it on the new location. We normally run the Broken Link Checker; we have vers. 1.5.5 (on WordPress 3.4).

      I’m recreating a lot of entries in new format and a rebuilding a lot of links and every time I put up a new VALID link, here comes Broken Link Checker and flags it as broken. I’ve tried to tell it to ignore any urls containing “liferingrecovery” but it doesn’t seem to help. I could just turn off the tweak that displays the line through, but I’d like to know why it thinks these links are “broken.” Has it got to do with the way I moved the site?? Any help gratefully appreciated.

    8. […] non funzionanti. A questo scopo puoi utilizzare un utilissimo plugin di wordpress che si chiama broken link checker oppure puoi usare alcuni servizi online per la ricerca di link non […]

    9. Jānis Elsts says:

      What status message does the plugin display for the links? Is it “404 Not Found” or something else? You can also click on the value listed in the “Status” column for more details on when and how the plugin checked the link, and what response it got from the server.

    10. […] Broken Link Checker; a simply yet straight to the point kind of plugin. Ideal to make sure that none of the URL’s in your posts or pages suddenly points to non existing contents. […]

    11. Jasjot Bains says:

      Is Broken Link Checker compatible with WP 3.4?

    12. Jānis Elsts says:

      Yes. I’m using it on several of my own WP 3.4 sites and haven’t noticed any problems.

    13. […] Broken Link Checker plugin is an easy way to make sure that all of the links on your site — internal or external — […]

    14. […] haben, kann man natürlich auch weitestgehend automatisieren mit Hilfe des WordPress Plugins Broken Link Checker, der einem nicht nur die eigenen Postinglinks überprüft, sondern eben auch defekte Kommentarlinks […]

    15. I installed your plugin in two of my blogs http://totallifechangescolombia.com and http://robertoarturoayala.com and since then not open, but the following address will not know […]? 2.

      I’m stuck with this. I deleted the plugin, but it did not work. I ask for your help. Thank you.

    16. Jānis Elsts says:

      Sorry, I don’t quite understand what you’re asking here. Is the problem that the .ru site doesn’t work?

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