Too many false positives recently
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Thank you for a very useful plugin, it has helped me to find some dead links. However, recently the false positives have increased significantly. In the last two days, I got 8-10 broken links and I could click on them to visit their sites with no problem at all. The BLC reported them as broken, even after rechecks.
Can there be something introduced in a recent update as none of these are new links? My version is 1.11.15, WordPress is the latest, 5.7.
Thank you,
Cemal
- This topic was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by ACEkin.
The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]
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Hi @acekin
Sorry to hear you are having this issue.
Could you click on the details and let us know which is the status that the plugin is getting? and if possible to share any of those links and we can test?
https://monosnap.com/file/wEQbaVBhHI9IW0lev3FioBG5ZESxHr
The BLC uses the website/server IP to ping the link, depending on the status if we can’t replicate it, it is possible the link target firewall is blocking those requests.
Best Regards
Patrick FreitasThank you for the reply. I am sharing a screen capture with some of the broken links showing the detail. I can click on any one of the links and they will open normally. The number of broken links was 5 yesterday and today it went up to 12.
Here is a screen capture link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/48mlnylybe0yqpc/blc_details.jpeg?dl=0
Thanks again,
Cemal
Hi @acekin
I’m afraid the screenshot is not much readable to get all content.
Can you take a screenshot of only one of the link so it can have a better resolution?
Best Regards
Patrick FreitasSorry about that. Check once more, I put a larger screen capture. And, here are a couple of links from it:
http://www.dunnphotographic.com/
Also, pretty much all Facebook or Instagram link gives a redirect warning, it must be the nature of the beast.
Let me know if I can provide more information.
Cemal
Hello again,
On another site I maintain, a broken link found is not actually broken. If you visit the following page:
https://www.divorceecafe.org/tip-tuesday-getting-started/
you will find a link at the end of the article referring to utahdivorceplanner.com and it works. But, you will see it is crossed out.
I thought I would add another data point. And, on my original report, add one more broken link detection that is not broken. Before I disable the plugin, I wanted you to see the issue first hand.
Cemal
You will not see the broken links on the sites I reported because I have deactivated the plugin on both.
Thanks,
Cemal
Hi @acekin
Thank you for the links and update.
For the https://www.divorceecafe.org/tip-tuesday-getting-started/ when I tried to access got a 403 and Cloudflare challenge:
https://monosnap.com/file/ZAe6Ksh0Z0Lmhd6A90b9XpOZutxzwa
It is possible the cURL request from Broken Link checker is also getting it.
For other links I got a 200 status:
https://monosnap.com/file/cZQ1JT1wcEsLCRIgugH5R4vkRjgoCmFrom your screenshot it shows a timeout.
Could you please check some hosting values?
– Make sure the PHP is 7.3 or 7.3
– Memory Limit 256M or 512M
– Max Execution Time 300Check the timeout in the plugin settings:
https://monosnap.com/file/Gi57Tp0tVSJJY0vvZjUFvnsyjiwiXO
Make sure it is around 30s or more.
Let us know the result you got.
Best Regards
Patrick FreitasThat is strange. When I view the broken links, I can click on the link reported as broken and the page loads fine with no CloudFlare challenge. The plugin settings were at their default, I have not changed anything, and the PHP is up to the required minimum. I guess there are new challenges for BLC.
Take care,
Cemal
Hi there @acekin
I just tested all 4 of the links shown in your screenshot (2 of which you posted above) by adding them to a post on my test site, and they work just fine there.
All of them responded in about 0.2secs or less:
https://monosnap.com/file/chVA0cYX9OKm5UIx5DVVDFmD2jU9WeAnd I see similar when viewing data of those pages in browser console Network tab; all about 0.2secs response time:
https://monosnap.com/file/liOtOONJSDBjfNHhA5HXi4JChMjI22However, your screenshot shows they timed out from your site after over 28secs each. So it kinda sounds like there may be some latent bottleneck or throttling going on from your end.
Are both of your sites hosted on the same server? If so, you may want to check with your host to see if they are perhaps experiencing any issues that may be affecting outbound links on your sites.
Or perhaps this may have something to do with your CloudFlare setup. Have you tested with CF paused on those sites?
Cheers!
Patrick C.@wpmudevsupport16, Patrick, thank you for the additional information. Yes, these sites are on the same hosting company and both of these sites have been behind CludFlare and I don’t recall this many false alerts before.
If I disable CloudFlare, do I just wait for BLC go through its motions or click on Recheck link to manually initiate the process? If that works, where does it take me? I have deleted the plugin from my site, keptlight.com. If I install it again, will it start from square one?
Cemal
Hi @acekin
If I disable CloudFlare, do I just wait for BLC go through its motions or click on Recheck link to manually initiate the process?
Either would work but if you manually recheck links it might just be sooner (pretty much right away) as automated check is run on schedule and the “recheck period” depends on what’s set in “Check each link” option on “Settings -> Link Checker” page (by default it is 72 hours I think).
I have deleted the plugin from my site, keptlight.com. If I install it again, will it start from square one?
If you have removed it via wp-admin (Plugins page) then yes because it removes tables form the database. But if you have only deleted plugin files (e.g. via FTP) then the tables should still be there in the database so plugin would just “pick up where it stopped”.
Kind regards,
AdamWell, thank you but after trying it once more I decided that it was taking too much of my time and this time deleted it altogether. After the initial deactivation, I reactivated and used the “Nuclear option” to recheck everything. It found 2,700 unique links in 4,000+ total. But, the links reported as broken and marked as such on live pages were loading fine. I tried the recheck multiple times. All “timed out” but I could click on the link and visit the destination site. By the way, the site is no longer behind CloudFlare but that is not helping me.
I appreciate having used it in the past, thank you all. But as in its current state, it is creating too much confusion for me.
Cemal
Hi @acekin
Sorry to hear you had this hard time
As this is a local issue unfortunately some tests need to be done to find why the link reports timeout.
Feel free to ping us any time you need or in case you would like to keep the troubleshooting.
Best Regards
Patrick FreitasThank you for trying to help. I’ll have to learn to live without the BLC!
Cemal
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