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Broken Link Notifier

Description

The "Broken Link Notifier" WordPress plugin is a vigilant guardian for your website's links, monitoring and alerting you to broken or dead links as users visit your site. This ensures a seamless user experience and helps prevent search engine ranking penalties. Unlike other broken link checker plugins that can cause performance and timeout issues with full site scans, this plugin focuses on notification, making it a great complement to offsite services that handle full site scans.

This plugin:

  • Scans content when users visit a page after the page fully loads, preventing performance lag
  • Identifies broken links, including 404 errors, timeouts, images, and embedded YouTube videos
  • Notifies you via dashboard notifications, email, Discord, and/or Microsoft Teams
  • Provides a list of broken links for easy review and correction
  • Allows easy replacement of links straight from the results page (NEW with Version 1.2.0)
  • Caches working (good) links to skip rechecking them for a configurable amount of time (NEW with Version 1.2.5)

With "Broken Link Notifier", you can:

  • Ensure accurate and functional links for your users
  • Prevent search engines from indexing broken links
  • Maintain a professional and trustworthy website image
  • Save time and effort in manual link checking
  • Scan multiple pages at a time on the back-end from your WP List Tables
  • Improve performance by caching successful link checks (optional)

This plugin is a must-have for website owners, developers, and SEO enthusiasts who want to guarantee a smooth and error-free browsing experience for their audience!

IF THIS PLUGIN FLAGS SOME LINKS AS BROKEN WHEN THEY ARE NOT, PLEASE READ THE FAQ BELOW

Demo

Screenshots

Page load scan results on back-end
Page load scan results on back-endPage load scan results on front-end in dev consoleOmitted linksOmitted pagesDetailed single page scanMulti-Scan running scans on multiple pages in WP List TablesFind broken links easily on front-end with a glowing animation and red borderSettingsDeveloper hooks on Help tab

FAQ

Will this plugin slow down my site?

Why do some links show as broken when they are not?

What causes a link to give a warning?

What is status code 666?

Can I omit links and pages from scans?

When I click on "Find On Page," I cannot find the link. Where is it?

Why does the dev console show more links that what is scanned on the Multi-Scan?

What pre-checks are used to filter out broken links?

What can I do if I have the same broken link on a lot of pages?

Why does my multi-scan page stop loading halfway down?

Are there hooks available for Developers?

Where can I request features and get further support?

Installation

1. Install the plugin from your website's plugin directory, or upload the plugin to your plugins folder.

2. Activate it.

3. Go to Broken Link Notifier > Settings in your admin menu.

4. Update your notification method(s) and post types.

5. Go to Broken Link Notifier > Omitted Pages, and add any pages that you don't want to scan, such as pages you know won't have any links on them. This will speed up the multi-scan option.

5. Page load scans are enabled automatically, so it's recommended that you test it out by deliberately making some broken links on a test page and then visiting the page. The results should show up on the Broken Link Notifier > Results page, and notify you if you have enabled email, Discord, or Microsoft Teams notifications. Reloading the page will not submit them twice. For testing, you should delete them from the results so they get reported again.

6. It is suggested to run a Multi-Scan on each of your public-facing post types to quickly see if there are any broken links before others encounter them. Also to omit some links that will be reported as false positives. You can omit individual links quickly from the results, or you can go to Broken Link Notifier > Omitted Links to add a domain with a wildcard (*), which will omit all links starting with that domain. See screenshots for examples.

What Next?

How-To GuideDeveloper Docs

1.3.0

  • Update: New support links

1.2.6.1

  • Fix: Option in settings to show good links on results page was set to true by default; turned it off

1.2.6

  • Update: Added an option in settings to show good links on results page (props to @colnago1 for suggestion)
  • Update: Added an export page (props to @colnago1 for suggestion)

1.2.5.3

  • Fix: Link search not finding some URLS
  • Fix: Undefined array key "min"

1.2.5.2

  • Fix: Function wpdb::prepare was called incorrectly. Unsupported value type (array).

1.2.5.1

  • Fixes: Sanitizing and unslashing some variables

1.2.5

  • Update: Added option for caching good links (enable in settings)

1.2.4.2

  • Fix: If no link is found, omit it

1.2.4.1

  • Tweak: Updated "Did not pass pre-check filter" error to provide more information

1.2.4

  • Tweak: Added minified versions of results-front.js and results-front.css
  • Tweak: Removed omitted links and omitted pages hooks from readme.txt since they were moved to their own pages

1.2.3

  • Update: Auto-switch user agent for X/Twitter links if a custom user agent isn't provided
  • Update: Updated author name and website again per WordPress trademark policy

1.2.2

  • Update: Changed author name from Apos37 to WordPress Enhanced, new Author URI
  • Tweak: Optimization of main file
  • Fix: Undefined variable $redirect_detected

1.2.1

  • Update: Added a method column to the results page
  • Fix: Links being added from invalid sources
  • Tweak: Links without a source will be automatically removed
  • Fix: Some links are being added to results without a source
  • Update: Added option to pause auto-verification on results page
  • Update: Admin bar count is reduced in real time if results are removed
  • Tweak: Update notice on results page from "trash" to "clear" (props @cantabber for pointing it out)

1.2.0

  • Update: Added code 413 to warnings and automatically code files larger than 10 MB with 413 when using `GET` requests (allowing redirects option)
  • Update: Added an option for forcing documents to use `HEAD` requests
  • Fix: Gifs, videos, and other large files timing out (props @mrphunin)
  • Update: Added a Replace Link action to link column on results page (props a4jp-com for suggestion)
  • Update: Added a Trash Page action to source on results page; must enable it in Settings (props @mrphunin for suggestion)
  • Fix: Sometimes no permission for trash error; changed Clear Result action to use ajax instead
  • Tweak: Renamed all other action links on link and source columns on results page
  • Tweak: Changed Edit link to "Edit Page" (props a4jp-com)

1.1.4.2

  • Tweak: Added support for translations on some other info boxes
  • Update: Added an info box to the top of the results page with clarification on trashing results
  • Fix: Undefined array key "HTTP_REFERER"

1.1.4.1

  • Update: Added an option to pause front-end scanning (props @ravanh)
  • Update: Added status codes to settings, allowing you to change types, deprecated hooks will only work if codes in settings have no been saved: blnotifier_bad_status_codes, blnotifier_warning_status_codes

1.1.4

  • Update: Added field for user agent and option to mark status code 0 as broken instead of warning (props @ravanh)

1.1.3.8

  • Update: Allowed max redirects to be 0 to show redirect status code instead of the final status code

1.1.3.7

  • Fix: Multi-Scan redirecting if content is not found or if pages have shortcodes that redirect

1.1.3.6

  • Update: Added settings for allowing redirects and setting max redirects amount (props @ravanh)

1.1.3.5

  • Fix: Fatal error on helpers.php at line 1001

1.1.3.4

  • Fix: Fatal error when trying to uncheck all post types in settings (props @ravanh)

1.1.3.3

  • Fix: Added support for links starting with // (props pauleipper)

1.1.3.2

  • Fix: Added full path to multi scan links to support multisite (props oddmoster)

1.1.3.1

  • Fix: Added full path to "Edit" link to support multisite (props oddmoster)

1.1.3

  • Update: Added a link search page

1.1.2

  • Fix: Warnings from Plugin Checker

1.1.1

  • Update: Auto-delete omitted links on Results page
  • Fix: Some links not being deleted due to special characters

1.1.0

  • Fix: YouTube links showing broken

1.0.9

  • Fix: Umlauts in links showing broken (props ralf d)
  • Tweak: Removed donate link, nobody donates anyway, working on premium version instead

1.0.8

  • Update: Added demo to readme.txt

1.0.7

  • Fix: Results page rescan not working on some links
  • Fix: Offsite checker links broken XD

1.0.6

  • Fix: wp_mail_failed logging error
  • Update: Added a string replace for `"×" => "x"`, which is being converted in images with sizes (ie _100x66.png)
  • Update: Added a new filter `blnotifier_strings_to_replace` for replacing simple characters

1.0.5

  • Update: Added a re-scan verification when loading results page as some false-positives occur with poor connections
  • Tweak: Updated plugin tags
  • Update: Added other plugins to bottom of help page
  • Update: Added an option in settings to include/exclude image src links
  • Tweak: Changed default timeout to 5 seconds

1.0.4.2

  • Fix: Emailing empty content if already added to results; stopped duplicate emails

1.0.4.1

  • Fix: MS Teams integration error with logging

1.0.4

  • Fix: Undefined variable on help page
  • Update: Added support for checking YouTube video links (props shirtguy72)
  • Update: Added support for iframe links (props shirtguy72)
  • Update: Added support for image source links

1.0.3.1

  • Tweak: Fix minor issues found by WP repo plugin reviewer

1.0.3

  • Tweak: Updates recommended by WP repo plugin reviewer
  • Fix: Settings saved notification not echoing
  • Tweak: Removed links post type and help docs post types if installed

1.0.2

  • Tweak: Added nonce to Page Scan JS
  • Update: Added Multi-Scan and Page Scan results to results page
  • Tweak: Changed "Full Scan" references to "Multi-Scan"

1.0.1

  • Deployment
  • Version 1.3.0
  • Last updated 2 weeks ago
  • Initial release April 7, 2024
  • WordPress version 5.9
  • Tested up to 6.8
  • PHP version 7.4
  • Tags

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