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.

    2,582 Responses to “Broken Link Checker for WordPress”

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    1. Nederlandse ondernemers says:
      December 2, 2020 at 15:25

      Broken link checker really helped me with my seo

    2. virtuallyGhetto gets a bit less ghetto … says:
      December 14, 2020 at 15:38

      […] Broken Link CheckerBuySellAd […]

    3. BLOGGING BASICS: 23 Must-Have Word Press Plug Ins – 3 Boys and a Dog says:
      January 2, 2021 at 16:10

      […] 5.  Broken Link Checker […]

    4. Coming Out meiner Plugins - Teil 2 | Sylvis Blog says:
      February 4, 2021 at 17:44

      […] Broken Link Checker […]

    5. Coming Out meiner Plugins | Sylvis Blog says:
      February 4, 2021 at 17:45

      […] Broken Link Checker […]

    6. Defekte Links finden | WordPress Vergleich says:
      March 8, 2021 at 15:01

      […] Broken Link Checker ist ein WP Plugin, das defekte Links automatisch aufspürt. So kannst Du in den Plugin-Optionen […]

    7. Torsten says:
      April 20, 2021 at 11:10

      Wirklich ein geniales Plugin: Einmal installiert, beginnt das Plugin damit, deine Beiträge, Seiten, Bookmarks und andere Inhalte zu scannen und nach Links zu durchsuchen. Jede Menge man manuelle Arbeit wird hier automatisiert.

    8. WordPress Plugin to check the validity of the links inside your post | Developers Creed says:
      May 28, 2021 at 03:15

      […] can find Broken Link Checker from here or by searching the WordPress plugin depository. as for the installation it could not be […]

    9. Cocktaily says:
      June 8, 2021 at 22:59

      Used the backlink checker for my current domain – it helped me a lot. Thanks for sharing!

    10. Tim says:
      June 16, 2021 at 12:39

      Very good Plugin. We like it alot.

    11. Marco says:
      July 11, 2021 at 11:16

      Great Link checker. I used it a lot of times.

    12. Webdesign Frankfurt says:
      July 31, 2021 at 16:25

      Great Plugin for WP. Thanks for the good work.

    13. Successfully Balancing an Online Business and a Full-Time Job with Tom Drake [Interview] - Free Wordpress Lessons says:
      January 30, 2022 at 04:49

      […] quality of your site, both for readers and as a signal to Google. Every couple months you can run Broken Link Checker, Plugin Performance Profiler, Plugins Garbage Collector, and Delete Revision, then disable them […]

    14. The Importance Of Cleaning Up Broken Links For SEO says:
      February 16, 2022 at 16:20

      […] new Google algorithm, lots of broken links are a big No-No, so when I started my clean up I used a Broken Link Plug In and it said I had over 900 broken links (that it could find), so I have spent countless hours […]

    15. Bozena says:
      May 31, 2022 at 22:57

      I found this resource and it works great! Thank you!

    16. Bozena says:
      May 31, 2022 at 23:09

      Will this plugin work with Showit blog? which is running on Wordpres?
      Thank you for your answer

    17. Webtexter says:
      June 8, 2022 at 14:54

      Nice plugin, thank you for the recommendation

    18. Herbert Kempel says:
      June 24, 2022 at 11:39

      Thanks for this insightful article. This plugin will help a lot.

    19. SEO Dillenburg says:
      September 24, 2022 at 17:39

      Nice Plugin!
      Schöne Grüße aus Dillenburg 🙂

    20. Ten WordPress Plugins Recommendations | Letters Inside Out says:
      March 19, 2023 at 21:03

      […] Broken Link Checker – Does what it says! I actually don’t leave this one activated constantly, I usually activate it every so often and check for any broken links. What it does is scans all links and notifies you that they are broken. Then you can either correct them or unlink! You wouldn’t believe how often bloggers comment on LIO and typo their URL. This way I can fix those errors easily. […]

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