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.
    Related posts :
    This entry was posted on Sunday, August 5th, 2007 at 22:59 and is filed under WordPress Plugins. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

    2,584 Responses to “Broken Link Checker for WordPress”

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    1. Jānis Elsts says:
      July 7, 2013 at 10:10

      Hmm, I’m as surprised as you are. The plugin is still there, but it has been made invisible for some reason. I’ve already emailed someone @wordpress.org asking why that is.

    2. Top 5 Wordpress Plugins For The Month Of April 2013 says:
      July 7, 2013 at 12:28

      […] Broken Link Checker […]

    3. Top 9 Wordpress plugins for advanced websites says:
      July 7, 2013 at 16:50

      […] Missing images? Youtube video was deleted? This plugin will detect all broken and missing links, report it and suggest a link removal. You can also schedule an recurring scan of your entire website. Visit plugin site […]

    4. boris says:
      July 8, 2013 at 11:35

      Hi Janis,

      WP probably removed it because one user detected malwere in the plugin files. See http://wordpress.org/support/topic/known-malware-site-in-translation-files

      I couldn’t find any so far but who knows. Pls keep us up to date on this.

      Sunny regards from Germany
      Boris

    5. Jānis Elsts says:
      July 8, 2013 at 11:38

      I received an email notification from wordpress.org about this, and it turns out it’s actually a licensing issue (mostly) – some of the icons used by the plugin use a Creative Commons license, but the plugin directory requires everything to be GPL-compatible. I’m currently working on finding suitable replacement icons.

    6. Perry says:
      July 8, 2013 at 14:07

      Great plugin – just a query re the “Look for Links in” tab.

      I’ve got the Pods plugin installed and “Pod fields” and “Pods” both appear as options.

      Even so the Link checker doesn’t seem to detect broken links in any of the Pods fields.

      Is this supported at all?

      Many thanks
      Perry

    7. Jānis Elsts says:
      July 8, 2013 at 14:16

      I’m not familiar with the Pods plugin. What is the format of the Pods fields? Is it HTML, plain text, or something else?

    8. Perry says:
      July 8, 2013 at 15:05

      I have to confess I’m not that clear on the technicalities – there is some information in the Pods Framework website documentation that will explain it better than I can:

      http://pods.io/docs/database-reference/database-storage-internal-content-types/

    9. Nuevo diseño, nueva inspiración says:
      July 8, 2013 at 17:20

      […] a aparecer errores 404 por todos lados después de semejante puesta a punto, el plugin de WordPress Broken Link Checker es el mejor amigo que una blogger puede tener, ya que me detecta no solo los enlaces rotos que […]

    10. Så här hittar du döda länkar på din webbplats says:
      July 8, 2013 at 18:48

      […] WordPress Broken Link Checker-tillägget är en favorit i mitt stall som går igenom alla länkar på alla sidor och meddelar om det finns ett problem eller potentiellt problem. […]

    11. Broken link checker licentie issue - CAP5 says:
      July 8, 2013 at 21:15

      […] Gebruik je de WordPress plugin “Broken Link checker”? Hij is slechts tijdelijk uitgezet op wordpress.org. Dit heeft te maken met een licentie issue m.b.t. gebruikte iconen door de plugin. WordPress. Het origineel (als je hem snel nodig hebt) is te vinden op de originele pagina van Broken Link checker. […]

    12. TJ Greene | How To WordPress 2.0 says:
      July 8, 2013 at 21:30

      Janis,

      I wrote an article on Broken Link Checker (http://htwp2.com/broken-link-checker-plugin-for-wordpress/) a while back and we recently noticed a spike in traffic to it. A reader alerted us to its removal from the repository, leading me to investigate the problem and update the post accordingly. I have added some of your comments regarding the issue and a link to this page for readers to download it directly.

      Thank you for taking the time to keep us all informed as to what is going on with it and I hope you are able to get everything resolved soon.

      I look forward to updating the post once again, after you have rectified everything with WordPress.

      Best Regards,
      TJ Greene

    13. Richard says:
      July 8, 2013 at 23:31

      Just looked and downloaded the update. Broken Link Checker is available now

    14. Jānis Elsts says:
      July 8, 2013 at 23:50

      Indeed, it is back now. I replaced the problematic icons with GPL-compatible alternatives from the Font Awesome pack, and the plugin was re-opened.

    15. TJ Greene | How To WordPress 2.0 says:
      July 9, 2013 at 01:14

      That was fast!

      We were able to successfully update it on our servers and have notified our readers that they can now do the same.

      Best Regards,
      TJ Greene

    16. Tara Alemany says:
      July 9, 2013 at 07:35

      I have Broken Link Checker installed on all of my clients’ websites, and everyone loves it. However, today, we noticed an issue. I’ve updated the plugin to 1.8.1, but still have a problem.

      Suddenly, we have 40 broken links, 39 of which are to content on our own site (images mostly). The error message given is “timeout.” I’ve run all of the images through WP Smush.it to ensure they’re as small as possible, but we’re still getting the timeout error.

      Any idea what I should be looking for?

    17. Gerard @ CAP5 says:
      July 9, 2013 at 10:19

      Hi Janis,

      That was quick, my monitoring software noticed your release of 1.8.1 already with the replacement icons. Cudo’s on maintaining such a healthy and wonderfull tool.

      I’ll update my post about your efforts later today. It’s in dutch, but it’s all good 😉

      http://cap5.nl/broken-link-checker-licentie-issue/

      Regards,

      Gerard.

    18. Jānis Elsts says:
      July 9, 2013 at 11:31

      @ Tara:
      Could you post some example URLs? If you don’t want to make them public, you can send them to my email instead (use the contact form).

    19. Marcel says:
      July 9, 2013 at 12:14

      A very nice Tool, thank you 🙂 Is it possible to make for vBulletin Software?

    20. Jānis Elsts says:
      July 9, 2013 at 12:24

      No, it only works with WordPress.

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