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.
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You deserve some (more) publicity.
Thanks, White Shadow. I had to reopen the page on another tab, because it did not finished checking yet.
Just for fun:
Found 1614 broken links
7467 URLs in the work queue
Detected 11312 unique URLs in 13210 links.
And counting, I guess
If you ever need a something huge blog for bugtesting, a dump of mine will be available on request 🙂
Thanks WS. I’ll look out for the update, and drop in a paypal donation.
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Thanks for this very helpful plugin.
But there is one thing wrong when cheking pages: The plugin is unable to understand relativ links.
An example:
http://www.etes.de/informieren/unternehmen/ links to http://www.etes.de/informieren/unternehmen/systemhaus/. The href is just “systemhaus” because it is a subpage.
Is it possible to implement that? Do you need further informations from me?
The plugin was supposed to already understand relative URLs, but it appears I forgot to fully implement that feature. It should work better in the new version I’ve just uploaded to wordpress.org (0.5.6).
That is really a very useful tool, thanks.
Excelente plugin… ya lo he usado en varios sitios y funciona de maravilla, he logrado corregir una gran cantidad de vínculos rotos!
Saludos cordiales 🙂
I just wrote a review of your great plugin on my blog: http://www.word-ex-press.com/an-useful-plugin-broken-link-checker/.
Thanks for your job!
[…] können diese mit einem Klick entfernt werden. Das Plugin nennt sich Broken Link Checker von W-Shadow und prüft erstellte Artikel, Seiten und die Blogroll nach toten Links. Selbstverständlich […]
Addition to your answer with id: 657
I updated to thew new version and most oft my “broken links” did disappear. I fixed the other ones manually. 🙂
But one thing which still does not work. If the relative link starts with “../” or “../../” etc. the link is reported to be broken.
Specific examples would be nice. It’s supposed to handle URLs like that, so I need to see a more specific situation where it fails to find the bug.
[…] can also use the ‘Broken Link Checker‘ plugin which makes it a breeze to find and fix broken […]
Hi,
I was wondering if the plugin already had this capability or if it doesn’t it would be good to have it.
This plugin I think so far only checks official links that you can click on. But can it check just a simple url without being in a link format?
Like this: http://www.google.com
and not http://www.google.com
EDIT:
Hi,
I was wondering if the plugin already had this capability or if it doesn’t it would be good to have it.
This plugin I think so far only checks official links that you can click on. But can it check just a simple url without being in a link format?
Like this: http ://www. google.com (added spaces so it wouldn’t link) Basically urls that you have to copy and paste into your browser to get to it and now just one that you can click on.
and not http://www.google.com
Thanks.
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@Pascal : I shall add that to my To-Do list