Broken Link Checker & Redirect Manager

What it does

Links rot quietly. A page you linked to last year is gone, a product you recommended moved, and readers hit an error with no warning from your site. This plugin adds a scanner to the admin Tools area. One click reads your published posts and pages, collects the links inside them, and asks each address whether it still answers. The result is a report grouped by link, with a badge for what went wrong, how many places use it, and which post or page holds it along with the link text. When a dead address is one of your own paths, you can create a 301 redirect on the spot, without leaving the report.

Who it's for

Bloggers and site owners with a growing archive, where links go stale faster than anyone re-reads old posts. It is especially useful after you rename a post, change a slug or move content around, since the old paths can be redirected straight from the report. It also suits anyone doing an SEO tidy-up. A small site with a few dozen links will get an answer in a moment.

How it works

1. 01

   Open Tools in the admin area and choose Broken Link Checker, then press Start scan. Nothing is scanned until you press the button.

2. 02

   VeloCMS reads the saved HTML of your published posts and pages and collects the links in them. It skips in-page anchors, mailto and tel links, and resolves relative links against your site address, using your custom domain when you have one.

3. 03

   Each unique address is requested from your server, six at a time, with eight seconds allowed per request. A reply from 200 up to 399 counts as healthy, and anything else is listed as broken, timed out, blocked or errored.

4. 04

   The report lists problems with the clearest failures first. Open a row to see every post or page that uses the link and jump to its editor. Choose Create 301 to fill in a from path and a to path, and save the redirect.

What it can access

The scanner reads the titles, addresses and saved HTML of your published posts and pages, and requests the links it finds from your own server, identifying itself as VeloCMS-LinkChecker. Addresses that name private or local networks are skipped rather than requested. The only thing it writes is a redirect rule when you create one. The scan runs only for a signed-in site owner or team member. It adds a screen to Tools rather than a setting.

Honest limits

• Each scan reads at most 200 published posts and pages, 50 links per document and 400 different addresses. When a limit is hit, the report says the results were capped, so a very large site is checked in part.

• Links are checked with a lightweight request that does not download the page. A few servers refuse that kind of request or block automated visitors, so a healthy link can occasionally be reported as broken. Open it yourself before you remove it.

• Only links in the text of posts and pages are checked. Images, scripts, drafts, menus, the theme and any link that exists only inside a page-builder block are not part of the scan.

• A 301 redirect repairs a link that points at a path on your own site. For a dead link to someone else's site there is nothing to redirect, so you edit or remove the link in the post. The from path starts from the address's path, so check it before saving.

• A result is kept for 30 minutes. Scanning again inside that window shows the same report, and creating a redirect clears it so the next scan checks fresh.

Frequently asked questions

Related plugins

• Search Console
• SEO Schema Extender
• Related Posts

Specifications

Category

SEO

Price

Included

Version

1.0.0

Source

First-party