Description
PathCatch is the URL-health layer for WordPress. It is not an SEO suite — it keeps
your links, redirects, and crawl paths clean, and rolls everything into a single
URL Health Score so you can see at a glance what needs fixing.
Redirects
- Create and manage 301, 302, 307, and 308 redirects with exact, wildcard, and
regex matching. - Configurable matching: trailing-slash and case normalization, query-string
handling, and rule precedence. - Auto-create a 301 when a published post’s slug changes, so old URLs never 404.
- “Redirect intelligence” flags redirect chains and loops, and — as a background
check — redirects whose destination now returns a 404 or a server error, with
one-click “flatten chain”. - Import from CSV and
.htaccess; export to CSV, Apache, or Nginx (as text you
install yourself — PathCatch never writes to your server config).
404 monitoring
- Log WordPress-routed 404s with hit counts, referrers, and bot filtering.
- Turn any logged 404 into a redirect in one click.
- Retention control keeps the log from growing without bound.
Broken-link & sitemap scanning
- Scan posts and pages for broken links and images, on demand or on a schedule,
with an optional email digest. - Detect and validate your existing sitemap (WordPress core, Yoast, Rank Math,
AIOSEO) for unreachable or error URLs — PathCatch complements those plugins and
does not generate a competing sitemap.
Built to be safe
- Safe by default and reversible: nothing changes your content or server config
without you choosing to. - Hardened: redirect targets are validated against open-redirect abuse, outbound
link checks are guarded against SSRF, and all admin actions are capability- and
nonce-protected.
External services
PathCatch’s link and sitemap scanners make outbound HTTP requests from your
server to check whether URLs found in your content and sitemap are reachable.
For internal links these hit your own site; for external links they contact the
third-party sites you link to (just like a visitor’s browser would). No data about
your site is sent to any PathCatch-operated service — the plugin has no external
service of its own and does not “phone home”.
Screenshots
Installation
- Upload the
pathcatchfolder to/wp-content/plugins/, or install it from Plugins Add New in your dashboard. - Activate the plugin through the Plugins screen.
- Open the PathCatch menu in your admin. Redirects and 404 Watch are on by default; enable the Link Scanner and Sitemap Health under PathCatch Settings.
FAQ
-
Does this replace my SEO plugin (Yoast, Rank Math, AIOSEO)?
-
No. PathCatch is the operational URL-health layer beneath them. It manages
redirects and 404s and validates your existing sitemap rather than generating
one, so it works alongside your SEO plugin instead of competing with it. -
Will the redirects slow down my site?
-
No. Redirect rules are cached, and a request that doesn’t match a rule performs no
extra database query beyond the ones WordPress already runs. -
Does the scanner send my data anywhere?
-
No. Scans run on your own server and only request the URLs found in your content
and sitemap to see if they resolve. There is no external PathCatch service. -
Is it multisite compatible?
-
Yes. On a network activation the plugin creates its tables for every site, and new
sites are provisioned automatically.
Reviews
There are no reviews for this plugin.
Contributors & Developers
“PathCatch – URL Health, Redirects & 404 Monitor” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
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Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
1.0.0
- First stable release.
- Fix: exact-match redirect rules whose source contains a query string (e.g.
“/?p=51”) now match only that query, instead of matching every request to the
same path.
0.2.0
- New: background redirect destination-health monitoring (detects redirects that
now land on a 404 or server error) with one-click chain flattening. - New: Link Scanner — scan posts and pages for broken links and images, on demand
or on a schedule, with an optional email digest. - New: Sitemap Health — detect and validate your existing sitemap for unreachable
or error URLs. - New: multisite-safe activation, upgrade, and uninstall.
- Hardening and reliability: SSRF-guarded outbound checks (incl. IPv4-mapped IPv6),
open-redirect validation, a robust background-job queue, and 404-log retention.
0.1.0
- Initial release: Redirect Center, 404 Watch, redirect chain/loop detection,
auto-redirect on slug change, CSV/.htaccess import, server-rule export, and the
URL Health Score.