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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[…] Broken Link Checker I don’t know how anyone could have an active blog and keep the links up to date without this tool. I highly recommend this […]
[…] Broken Link Checker By Janis Elsts. Checks your posts for broken links and missing images and notifies you on the dashboard if any are found. […]
thanks for the plugin and all the information this will be very useful for bigger blogs
Hi, I think this plugin is really great, thank you so much for creating it. I would like to know if there are any plans to implement this feature in a future release, or if there is a simple way to batch-insert the “nofollow” tag to broken links?
I ask because, as a political blog, I have seven years’ worth of posts that link to news stories – many of which have now been archived or removed by the original sites. I could manually go through and find alternate sources or archive links for these thousands of links, but that’s fairly tedious. I could also bulk-remove them but that would be a bit like claiming that these posts didn’t have sources to begin with. So I would simply like to add “nofollow” to all these links.
Any thoughts?
Thanks again for the plugin and all the hard work.
I hadn’t thought of this myself, but I’ll add your suggestion to my idea list.
Perfect. Runs great. Thank you.
great plug in for word press lovers.. I loved it personally
By luksemburg macaristan vizesi
[…] dejando las antiguas tal y como estaban. Al cabo de un par de días, averigüé mediante el plugin Broken Link Checker que mis entradas anteriores también habían cambidado. Buscando por ahí encontré que con otro […]
[…] nannte mir dann in seinem Kommentar ein Plug namens “Broken Link Checker”, welches auf nicht mehr funktionierende Links im Blog aufmerksam […]
[…] Broken Link Checker デッドリンク(リンク切れ）をチェックしてくれるプラグイン。 いつの間にか消えてしまったサイトを教えてくれる。 実は自ブログ内リンクのミス発見率が高い。 デッドリンクではないものも誤爆してくれるので 自動で打ち消し線にするのはやめた方がいいかも。 これについては「Broken Link Checkerで困ったり嬉しかったり」で少し書いた。 […]
Hi, This plugin is really great idea, and just what a newbie like me needs.
Actually between Christmas and today Jan 4 2010 90% of all my links from posts to pages were broken but not detected by the plugin. When I click on a pic in the post it is supposed to transfer me to a linked page but somehow it didn’t, it just looped back to post itself. Have manually re-done and re-updated all the linking. Its spooky because nothing wrong with the textlinks but I just needed to re-do re-update exactly the same thing!
Firstly I am puzzled why the links got broken and still haven found the answer. Secondly I am puzzled like is this plugin meant to detect this type of broken links? (the links became looped-back, not broken as in cannot find the other end).
My http://www.eddiebauerconvertibleevenfloconvertiblecarseat.com is now working again and my purpose in writing is to thank the author for the plugin, and to alert bloggers to be aware of this type of “broken” links, and to seek help from anyone out there who knows why this is happening because this is the 2nd time its happened to my site and I still don’t know why, its scary 🙁
The plugin is not meant to detect “looping” links. I don’t know why some links would behave like that, but I would guess it’s probably caused by a buggy plugin.
[…] di fornire un supporto di base ai blogger che affidano a WordPress le loro pubblicazioni online: Broken Link Checker by Janis […]
Quick question: when this plugin is checking the links, is it doing it by querying the database, or is it trying to load the web pages themselves. Just curious as our site had a large spike in #page views, and so was wondering whether this plugin, which I had only just installed may be contributing.
[…] Broken Link Checker lisäosan avulla löydät blogistasi rikkinäiset linkit. Lisäosa listaa kaikki rikkinäiset linkit suoraan yhteen listanäkymään, jossa voit muokata linkkiä tai poistaa linkityksen menemättä itse blogikirjoitukseen. […]
It checks the links by trying to load the linked-to webpages (even for links that point to the same site as the one the plugin is installed on). So yes, it could inflate your web stats by some amount. However, it would probably not lead to a largespike – unless you have thousands of internal links.
[…] 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. […]
I second what “segacs” suggested. I think a “nofollow” option would be awesome. I would actually like it if this plugin would list all links and give the blog owner the option of adding or deleting the nofollow attribute to each and every link.
I guess that would turn this plugin into sort of a “link management” tool. Now that would really add more value to an already perfect plugin.
Great plug-in, works perfect.
this stuff like SEO bla bla bla
I already have,,, monitor 404 moduls included
anyway thank for this stuff