What HTTP code does BLC display for the redirects if not 302? Is it “200 OK”? Also, where are you linking to those redirected pages/posts, and could you show a few examples of the redirects you’ve set up?
It says “200 OK” but the redirect column is empty for those objects. If you go to this page http://www.atkaudiotek.com/newsroom/ and click on the top article “ATK Audiotek Provides Consoles, Main P.A. System for Grammy Awards” you can see that the redirect is bad but BLC states “200 OK” for the link objects. When you click on view of this the source from the detected links list, it takes you to the broken link destination yet the redirect column is empty.
If you go to this page http://www.atkaudiotek.com/newsroom/ and click on the top article “ATK Audiotek Provides Consoles, Main P.A. System for Grammy Awards” you can see that the redirect is bad but BLC states “200 OK” for the link objects.
There seems to be some confusion here.
The “Newsroom” page that you linked to looks like a category/tag archive, not an individual WordPress post or page. Given that BLC can only find links in the content of posts, pages, comments and so on, how did you get it to check something like a category archive?
This is just a guess, but perhaps you’re looking at the “Source” column of the “Broken links” page and assuming that is the link that’s being checked? In fact, the “URL” and “Link text” columns represent the link. “Source” is just shows where the plugin found that link. BLC doesn’t check the URL of the source post/page unless something actually links to that post/page.
Finally, the “ATK Audiotek Provides Consoles, Main P.A. System for Grammy Awards” link is not a redirect. It appears to be a direct link to this URL:
http://mixonline.com/mixline_live/atk_audiotek_provides_consoles_main_pa_system_for_grammy_awards_0503//index1.html
That’s also the URL that shows up in “view source”; there’s no actual redirection going on.
“Newsroom” is not a category/tag archive. It’s a page that is defined as the posts page in WP. Each of the entries are posts. I’m using a plugin called “Quick Page/Post Redirect” that adds a screen option to the page/post WP editor to make setting up page/post redirects easy. These page/post redirect settings, including the actual link URL, are stored in the table “wp_postmeta”. It appears that BLC doesn’t look through that table.
You’re right that it’s actually a direct link. The plugin refers to it as a redirect with an option to open the “redirect” link in a new window.
“Newsroom” is not a category/tag archive. It’s a page that is defined as the posts page in WP.
I see. Well, it’s still something BLC wouldn’t check – the plugin looks at the content inside posts, not at lists of posts.
It appears that BLC doesn’t look through that table.
That is correct. By default, BLC doesn’t check custom fields at all. Custom fields may contain arbitrary content and there’s no easy way to automatically determine which of them might be links.
If the field in question contains only a link URL and nothing else, adding the field name to the list of custom fields under “Settings -> Link Checker -> Look For Links In” might do the trick.
So if I just add the field “meta_value”, BLC will know to look in the “wp_postmeta” table?
This is the exact value of that field for the problem post:
http://mixonline.com/mixline_live/atk_audiotek_provides_consoles_main_pa_system_for_grammy_awards_0503//index1.html
So if I just add the field “meta_value”, BLC will know to look in the “wp_postmeta” table?
No, I mean the name of the custom field, not the table column. Add the value that’s in the “meta_key” column.
No custom fields are being used. The value in the “meta_key column for this post is “_pprredirect_url”.
Sorry but I’m not quite following you here.
My apologies for being unclear. When I said “custom fields”, I meant “post metadata”. The two concepts are closely related, but they’re not always completely interchangeable.
Technically speaking, the wp_postmeta table stores post metadata. Custom fields are a type of metadata, so they’re stored in wp_postmeta. Some WordPress documentation refers to all post metadata as “custom fields”.
However, not everything in that table is a visible custom field. Entries that have a key that starts with an underscore will not show up in the “Custom fields” box. These are sometimes called hidden custom fields.
Try adding _pprredirect_url to the settings page I mentioned above.
Adding _pprredirect_url in the custom entries setting fixed it.
Thanks for the support!
