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: Checks your entire blog for broken links in posts or pages and puts a message in your Dashboard when it finds some. Offers you various options for dealing with them – e.g. you can ignore the notice, remove the link, edit the link, etc. […]
The plugin reports that http://www.eeicom.com:80/training/dispclas.cfm?classID=70700 is a broken link but it isn’t. Here are the details: HTTP Code : 60
1. Log : (Using Snoopy)
connection failed (60)
HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Connection: close
Date: Mon, 06 Apr 2009 22:52:13 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Set-Cookie: CFID=1193978;expires=Wed, 30-Mar-2039 22:52:13 GMT;path=/
Set-Cookie: CFTOKEN=73796203;expires=Wed, 30-Mar-2039 22:52:13 GMT;path=/
location: /training/dispclas.cfm?classID=70700
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Link is broken.
Looks like an internal Snoopy problem (Snoopy is the library that the plugin uses when cURL is unavailable). All I can suggest at the moment is to get your host to install cURL.
A quick comment on the plugin. Is there any way to send broken link findings to my email? It’d be a great help as I’m not often able to check my WordPress all that often, but I do check my email. Thanks!
Unfortunately not. While it would be possible to make a little script that checks the plugin’s DB table and reports broken links by email, the plugin wouldn’t actually run if no-one visits the admin dashboard (this might be changed in a future update).
[…] letztere Aufgabe bin ich heute über das sehr nützliche Plugin Broken Link Checker gestolpert. Satte 98 Links wurden mir als nicht funktionsfähig angezeigt. Ein Großteil besteht […]
The last trackback is from me. It describes (in german) how to display a tooltip on broken links in posts. Unfortunately a code change is necessary for that, but an easy one, maybe you could integrate that in a further release.
In broken-link-checker.php in line 124, just add something like this at the end of the line: “This link is broken”.
Then define the broken link class so, that span elements are only display when they are hovered over with the mouse. You get a tooltip effect where the user can see a small info what is wrong with the link.
Marco
Ok, the span elements were filtered out for the info text, just add span-Elements between the quotes and you are good to go.
I’ve had a similar idea for a while; I’ll add it soon.
[…] 配布先：http://w-shadow.com/blog/2007/08/05/broken-link-checker-for-wordpress/ […]
Hey, this is a great Tool,
but when this is activate, the Plugin Site is only white.
Can you Help?
[…] Broken Link Checker for WordPress – когда у блога все больше и больше постов, становится трудно найти неработающие ссылки и изображения. Плагин сделает всю работу за вас. […]
[…] website and have vanished leaving nothing but a 404 error in their place. I found a useful plugin to help with the link rot problem which has revealed around 80% of my broken links point to […]
[…] Broken Link Checker […]
[…] Broken link checker wordpress plugin comes very handy in such situations. It will show the broken link on your dashboard which you can unlink from there. Download Broken link checker for WordPress […]
[…] kurzem berichtete ich (hier) darüber, dass ich das Plugin Broken Link Checker in den Blog einsetze. Heute morgen habe ich mich endlich hingesetzt und die insgesamt 53 ins Leere […]
[…] Broken link checker wordpress plugin comes very handy in such situations. It will show the broken link on your dashboard which you can unlink from there. Download Broken link checker for WordPress […]
[…] Broken Link Checker: وجود لینک های خراب در یک وبلاگ، در رتبه بندی و ایندکس گذاری ها توسط سایت ها و موتور های جست و جو تاثیر گذار است. به وسیله ی این افزونه شما می توانید به راحتی لینک های خراب کل وبلاگ خود را بیابید و آنها را ترمیم کنید. […]
[…] http://w-shadow.com/blog/2007/08/05/broken-link-checker-for-wordpress/ […]
[…] Broken link checker wordpress plugin comes very handy in such situations. It will show the broken link on your dashboard which you can unlink from there. Download Broken link checker for WordPress […]