Need some help maintaining your WordPress site? Looking for an easy way to find and remove broken links?
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Broken Link Checker: Quick Review
The Broken Link Checker plugin works by monitoring your site for broken links, missing images, and redirects. If it finds any, it notifies you via the WordPress dashboard or email.
For more information about what the plugin can do, be sure to check out Tyler Cruz’s review. And if you’d like to try it out for yourself then WPBeginner has a tutorial on how you can get started with it.
A Developer’s Perspective
Broken Link Checker is one of those plugins that you regularly want to activate on your clients’ sites to make sure they don’t have any broken links. The plugin itself is incredibly lightweight and offers a ton of configuration options so you can fine tune its monitoring and results.
One of the things I like best about this plugin is that it lets you pre-emptively manage broken links. So, for instance, you could have the Broken Link Checker automatically apply custom formatting to all of the broken links it encounters using CSS. In addition to this, the plugin also lets you stop search engines from following any broken links.
Pros
- Checks for and reports all broken links on your site at regular intervals.
- Automatically applies custom formatting to broken/removed links.
- Lets you choose where to look for links and what post statuses to monitor.
Cons
- Not compatible with all hosting providers e.g. WP Engine.
An Average User’s Perspective
As an average user, the Broken Link Checker is a lifesaver. It automatically detects broken links on my site and suggests alternatives whenever possible which makes it easy to fix those links without having to go through old posts again.
I was able to configure the plugin to check my site every 48 hours for broken links and notify me via email if it found any. Another neat feature that the plugin offers is that it automatically checks all new links to see if they’re broken if you have the plugin activated at all times, that is.
Pros
- Automatically checks for broken links and reports back if it finds any.
- Offers suggestions to fix broken links.
Cons
- Incompatible with some hosting providers.
To Sum It Up
If you’re a WordPress developer building or maintaining WordPress sites for clients then I would recommend using the Broken Link Checker regularly to make sure they don’t have any broken links.
And if you’re an average user who’s managing their own WordPress site then the Broken Link Checker plugin is a must-have. It’ll help you scan through your old posts and find any broken links that they might contain and is indispensable for when your blog has around (or more than) a few dozen entries.
Note: Please make sure your hosting provider allows the Broken Link Checker plugin before you install it to your site.
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