Plainsum Broken Link Fixer

Description

Broken Link Fixer finds links and images that no longer work and helps you repair them, instead of just handing you a long list.

It reads your published posts, pages, menus and block-theme navigation, then checks each address in small, slow batches in the background. Your site stays fast, your database stays small, and nothing is sent to a cloud service.

Fix, don’t just find

Broken links are grouped by URL. Each group shows every post and menu item that uses it, with one-click fixes:

• Edit URL: change the address everywhere it is used, in one step.
• Unlink: remove the link but keep the text (or remove a broken image).
• Not broken: mark a false alarm so Broken Link Fixer stops reporting it.
• Recheck: test the link again right now.
• Update URL on redirected links: switch to the final address and skip the extra hop.
• Undo: every edit and unlink is recorded in the Fix log, with a restore button.

Built to be gentle

• Checks run in background batches through WP-Cron. You choose how many links per batch and how long to wait between batches. The default is 10 links every 30 seconds.
• At most two requests per website per batch, so linked sites are not hammered.
• One database row per distinct URL, never one per occurrence. A cap on stored URLs, a capped fix log, and automatic clean-up of links that no longer appear in any post.
• Links on your own site are checked without a web request when possible: posts are looked up directly and uploaded files are checked on disk.

Fewer false alarms

• “Broken” means a real 404 or 410, a domain that does not exist, or a link that keeps failing across several checks.
• Sites that block automated checks (401, 403, 429 and similar) are listed as “Could not verify”, not broken.
• Temporary server errors and timeouts are retried before they are reported.
• HEAD requests that a server refuses are confirmed with a tiny GET before judging.
• You can skip domains that always block bots, such as social networks.

Private by design

• No account, no license key, no external service run by the plugin author.
• The only network requests are the checks themselves, sent from your server to the addresses already in your content.

For developers

Broken Link Fixer exposes neutral hooks so other plugins can build on it. Examples: the nblf_link_status_changed, nblf_scan_finished, nblf_after_fix and nblf_after_undo actions; the nblf_link_actions action (add buttons to a link card); and the nblf_check_result, nblf_should_check_url, nblf_request_args, nblf_post_types, nblf_post_statuses, nblf_max_links and nblf_capability filters.

External services

Broken Link Fixer does not connect to any service operated by its author or anyone else.

To do its job it sends HTTP requests (HEAD, and a small GET when needed) from your server to the URLs that appear in your own content, to find out whether they work. Those requests include a User-Agent that names the plugin and your site address (for example Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; PlainsumBrokenLinkFixer/1.0.0; +https://example.com/)), so the owners of linked sites can see who is checking. Nothing else about your site, your users or your content is sent. Requests to private or internal addresses are blocked.

You control the speed in Tools > Broken Link Fixer > Settings, and you can add any domain to the skip list so it is never requested.