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 :
- Download the .zip file (see below).
- Unzip.
- Upload the
broken-link-checkerfolder to you/wp-content/pluginsdirectory. - Activate the plugin in the Plugins tab.
Subscribe via RSS
Get Updates by Email
[…] Broken Link Checker – Checking broken links can be a tedious chore and this plugin makes this task simple by checking […]
[…] Broken Link Checker ; Another must have for siteowners everywhere. This plugin basically goes through EVERY single link there is on your site and checks to see if it’s broken. If it is, it gives you a handy dandy table to where you can select to whether you would like to unlink it or even discard it, all without having to actually edit the page. A lifesaver! […]
[…] Broken Link Checker – A handy little tool which regularly checks all of the links on your blog and warns you of any broken ones. Includes a handy interface to change or unlink broken links without editing the full post or page. It does struggle with some redirected links but that’s not really the fault of the plugin. […]
Is the plugin compatible with wordpress 2.7 ?
Thank you for your great work.
I haven’t done any in-depth testing, but it appears to be working okay on my two WP 2.7 sites. I think it should be fine.
i have just downloaded it mate.. hope it works well for my website… thanks a lot for sharing..
http://www.edtechguide.com
[…] Broken Link Checker (Dowload Broken Link Checker) […]
[…] Broken Link Checker (Dowload Broken Link Checker) […]
[…] Broken Link Checker für WordPress wird einfach im Backend aufgerufen und überprüft dann die gesamte Website. Im […]
[…] Broken Link Checker Checks your posts for broken links and missing images and notifies you on the dashboard if any are […]
Hellon
like coment#302 I have this error on admin panel:
“Error: You can’t do that. Access denied.”
Hmm, try to log out and log in again. If that doesn’t help, try resetting your account’s role to “Administrator”.
[…] Broken Link Checker for WordPress – this handy little tool can automatically check your entire wordpress blog for broken links and will alert them too you. You can also apply CSS to the broken link. […]
Hey, nice plugin.
For some reason, whenever I update the options (pressing the button), I am redirected to my login page, and cannot proceed from there. Entering the password does not help.
If nobody else experienced it, it is probably a collision between your plugin and some other plugin i have – maybe MiniMeta widget, which incorporates some wordpress redirect function.
Anyways, thought Id let you know.
Indeed, it’s probably some kind of plugin conflict. As far as I know, nobody has reported anything similar yet.
There is a conflict with Broken Link Checker and a $97.00 paid-for plugin called ‘MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate WP Plugin.’ MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate is a plugin that cloaks affiliate links. Anyway, what happens is that Broken Link Checker will randomly put a strikethrough line through a couple of my affiliate links. I say “random” because I haven’t figured out any pattern as to why it will do that to one affiliate link and not other affiliate links. Your plugin is a good one but unfortuneately had to deactivate it because of that problem. I have no interest with the company that makes this plugin but you can see more about it here: http://www.mbpninjaaffiliate.com/ It would be nice to know if you plan on fixing your plugin so I can start using it again.
Thanks
Steve
I don’t have any immediate idea about how to fix the conflict itself, but you can remove the strikethrough by unchecking “Apply class=’broken_link’ to broken links” in the plugin’s settings (Setting -> Link Checker).
Also, you might be able to stop the link checker from checking cloaked links by experimenting wih the exclusion list on the same page. Find a piece of text that appears in all cloaked links and add it to the list. Though I’m not entirely sure if that would work because I haven’t used the Ninja Affiliate plugin.
[…] Links kommen hier im Blog in Zukunft nicht mehr vor, dank des Broken-Link Plugins von White Shadow. Es scannt bequem im Hintergrund alle vorhandenen Links in allen Posts und listet […]
[…] Broken Link Checker for WordPress – As your blog gets more and more posts, it can be difficult to go back and look for what has broken with time. This plugin will check images and links and notify you via the dashboard when it locates something. […]
Hello!
I observed strange behavior with wordpress 2.7:
when I post youtube video, link checker reports them as dead. It’s not a problem – I can discard them, but… they are back sooner or later.
any update?