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. White Shadow says:
      March 4, 2009 at 23:55

      Same here, I use PHP 5 both on my dev machine and on this site and the plugin works fine. Are there any PHP error messages in the HTML?

    2. WordPress Plugins for March 4, 2009 — Bill Bolmeier says:
      March 5, 2009 at 09:03

      […] I moved my wife’s blogger blog to WordPress I needed a way to check for broken links and the Broken Link Checker for WordPress plugin helped me identify all the broken links I needed to check into and fix.  It provides a list […]

    3. Richard says:
      March 5, 2009 at 11:13

      I’ve deactivated all other plugins and still get the same problem, only when running PHP 5 but not PHP 4. Sorry, how would I check for PHP error messages?

    4. White Shadow says:
      March 5, 2009 at 17:19

      View source and search for any mentions of “error” or “warning”. My guess is that there’s an error message generated somewhere that breaks the HTML and makes the page render incorrectly.

    5. PGN Spring Cleaning | Paddling~Geek.Net says:
      March 7, 2009 at 18:40

      […] Found and removed all those broken/dead links thanks to Nile for mentioning this plugin. […]

    6. 休憩、休憩 >> 病的溺愛シンドローム says:
      March 7, 2009 at 19:29

      […] 関係ないけど、Broken Link Checkerプラグインが切れてないリンクを デッドリンクとして認識しまくって困っている。 今日新しいバージョンが出ていたから更新したけど、改善されてるかなぁ？ […]

    7. 5 astuces pour nettoyer et optimiser la base de données Wordpress | Webdevonlinux says:
      March 11, 2009 at 16:47

      […] Si vous voulez diminuer votre taux de rebond et améliorer votre référencement, il est indispensable de contrôler les liens entre articles. Pour cela il suffit d’installer ce plugin : Broken Link Checker for WordPress […]

    8. أهم سبعة اشياء يجب أن تعملها في مدونتك كل أسبوع | أذكى سيرف says:
      March 12, 2009 at 08:18

      […] تقوم بهذا العمل في الووردبريس وهذه هي صفحة الإضافة Broken Link Checker […]

    9. Broken links RemoverでBad Linksを削除 >> 病的溺愛シンドローム says:
      March 12, 2009 at 18:23

      […] 違うんだ、あたしがやりたかったのは、昨日紹介したBroken Link Checkerの もっと精度のいいプラグインを入れたかっただけなんだ。 何もリダイレクトとかまでBad Linkと決めつけたかったんじゃないんだ。 くっ…。 […]

    10. A.S. says:
      March 13, 2009 at 21:53

      any hints on how to show redirect-pages 302/303 as broken links?
      $result[‘okay’] = (($code>=200) && ($code=200) && ($code<300)) || ($code == 401); is not working.

    11. White Shadow says:
      March 13, 2009 at 22:09

      Off the top of my head : 

      $result['okay'] = ( ($code>=200) && ($code<300) ) || ($code == 401);

      This will treat all 3XX codes as indicating broken links. The RFC says those are all some form of redirect, so the code should do what you want.

    12. A.S. says:
      March 13, 2009 at 23:37

      Thanks a bunch!Works sweeeet!Thank you so much,great plugin,love your site!

    13. A.S. says:
      March 14, 2009 at 01:31

      Btw,do you know if this plugin consumes a lot of bandwidth when checking links?I need to check about 4500 links every 24 hours.Thanks in advance.

    14. White Shadow says:
      March 14, 2009 at 01:51

      It tries to use only HEAD requests (when possible); that is, it asks the target server whether the page exists and doesn’t try to actually download it. This uses very little bandwidth. However, it will double-check each broken link and use more bandwidth for them.

    15. A.S. says:
      March 14, 2009 at 04:14

      Okay thanks,plugin works great 🙂

    16. The IT Juggler says:
      March 14, 2009 at 13:21

      There seems to be some interaction between BLC and Twitter Tools. With BLC activated, there suddenly appears a stack of ‘function()’ lines in the hour and minute drop down in Twitter Tools.

      Will also post this on Twitter Tools site.

      Apart from that, the plugin worked like a dream.

    17. White Shadow says:
      March 14, 2009 at 16:20

      I’ll look into it when I have time.

    18. デジタルカメラ RAW 互換性アップデート 2.5 » Wing World says:
      March 15, 2009 at 16:34

      […] Broken Link Checker 0.4.14 […]

    19. 8 Things I’m Up To (and where you fit in) | Confident Writing says:
      March 16, 2009 at 10:52

      […] those of you who are WordPress users, I check using the Broken Link Checker plug-in (though don’t leave it on all the time as it slows things down too much, just run it every so […]

    20. TrafficTips says:
      March 16, 2009 at 19:37

      I was looking for this plugin as I use WordPress as a standard publishing tool for all my websites. After installing it, I will share my experience later.

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