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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Works just fine! Thanks! I’ll try it a little more. But I think you could publish it already.
As it is will do for me. But will you add options related to this feature? I mean, to enable it or not, or to add some text to it? I, for example, would be interested in the second.
No, I probably won’t be adding any new options. If you want to change something, you could try modifying the relevant code in /broken-link-checker/modules/parsers/html_link.php (lines 187 – 191).
Thanks! The problem is my changes (hacks) being overwritten on future upgrades.
[…] そこで見つけたのが、Redirectionsってプラグイン。301 Redirectionを管理したり、404エラーを記録してくれたりするもの。これのリダイレクト機能を使って、アクセス数の多い旧ページのリンクを新ページへリダイレクトするように設定。上位20位くらいまでを手動で登録して何とかした！このプラグインが嬉しいのはリダイレクトした数をちゃんと表示してくれるところ、苦労したかいあったよねって気分になれる！ちなみに、投稿相互のリンクが壊れたのは投稿のリンクエラーをチェックしてくれるBroken Link Checkerを使えばOK！ […]
Well, if you think your changes (hacks) would be useful to many users, send me the code. I might add it to the one of those future upgrades.
I am running latest version of wordpress and php5. I have .96 installed. Sometimes when I delete a link or edit a link on the tool all my posts and pages vanish. I have to do a repair on my databases… happened to about 5 of my blogs so far and only seems to happen when i am using the tool, also doesnt happen everytime , very random. any thoughts
That sounds like a problem with the database itself. Sure, in theory a bug in the plugin could cause it to mess up the post it’s editing, but even then it couldn’t possibly corrupt the entire database.
[…] 今の活躍する機会無し。 Broken Link Checker ◆Delete-Revision WordPress […]
Strange things are gong on and I can’t figure out why.
We have several sites that have been doing this a little here and there but tonight the http://anipalinfo.com site had 60 broken links that worked and were fine. I deactivated cleared caches, and I was still getting server not found but the links all worked.
So after messing with them for a while found that if you put a forward slash after the url they would become unbroken. Like this http://anipalinfo.com/tony-curtis-shiloh-horse-rescue/
With out the end slash this link is broken.
Any ideas on the forward slash deal?
Both the with-slash and without-slash versions of the URL are detected as working when I test them on my dev blog.
Any unusual factors in your server configuration? PHP safe_mode? An old version of CURL, perhaps?
[…] including WP-Syntax for formatting code snippets, W3 Total Cache for performance optimization, Broken Link Checker, Fast Secure Contact Form and Sociable for sharing. Share and […]
[…] Broken Link Checker – monitors and notifies you for broken links on your blog. […]
[…] Broken Link Checker – Makes sure that every link on your site, including those in comments, works. If a link doesn’t work, it gives you notice on your dashboard. […]
[…] Broken Link Checker by Janis Elsts This plugin checks and validates all the links on your blog and reports its findings on your dashboard. If it finds a broken link, you can open the report and, with a couple clicks, fix the broken link. No need to open the post, find the link, and then correct it. The in-post corrections are made for you! I have it on all of my sites. Definitely cuts down on your webmaster email traffic due to 404 errors! By the way, if you are having 404 errors, you need to see Redirection below. […]
[…] in der loop.php und style.css, keine Ahnung, aber nun klappt es. Dankeschön dafür. Broken Link Checker mit diesem kleinen Tool kann man alle Links auf dem Blog, inklusive die in den Kommentaren, […]
I cant uninstall the plugin… it takes a lot of time, then goes to the plugins page saying that it was deactivated but it’s still there! Crazy! How can I force deactivate and uninstall it?
Hi,
When I update settings in this NICE plugin that I enjoy so much – I get:
“The plugin’s database tables are not up to date! (Current version : 4, expected : 5) ”
I run 5 blogs and one og them broken links checker actually had to be removed – same error and header, caused a crash…
Now 2 of my blogs (same server, same php, same host) gives me this msg?
(Not all my blogs runs same plugins so I expect it could be a HEAD-2-HEAD between two plugins that fights??
Any ideas?
@ Gystavo :
Use an FTP program to manually delete the /wp-content/plugins/broken-link-checker/ folder.
@ VSEO :
This is probably a bug, but I have no idea what’s causing it. The simplest solution is to uninstall the plugin completely (deactivate and delete), then reinstall it from scratch.
[…] completeness’ sake, here are the rest of the plugins I use:Align RSS Images Audio Player Broken Link Checker Contact Form 7 FD Feedburner Plugin Clean Options Google XML Sitemaps Lightbox 2 No Self Pings […]
[…] Broken Link Checker Dette hjælper dig med at finde links i dine indlæg som ikke eksistere mere, eller bliver vist som en 404-fejlside. Jeg er meget glad for dette plugin, og for noget tid siden skiftede jeg i min uploadings url, og dette hjalp mig med at finde det hele. […]