Broken Link Checker by ToolFlexy

About Broken Link Checker by ToolFlexy

Broken Link Checker by ToolFlexy is a privacy-first WordPress plugin that helps website owners find broken internal links, external links, missing images, unavailable video embeds, and redirect problems from one clear dashboard. It gives administrators useful evidence before they decide whether a URL really needs attention.

A broken link can send a visitor to a missing page, interrupt an important journey, waste crawl activity, and make an otherwise professional website feel neglected. Manually opening every link is impractical on a growing WordPress site. This plugin creates a structured local index, checks destinations in manageable background batches, and presents the results in language that ordinary users can understand.

Broken Link Checker features for WordPress

The checker covers internal and external links found in published posts, pages, supported public custom post types, navigation menus, selected metadata, images, iframe sources, and approved comments when comment scanning is enabled. It can also identify redirects, redirect chains, and redirect loops. YouTube and Vimeo embeds receive provider-aware verification so an unavailable video is not treated like an ordinary web page.

Each discovered destination keeps its source reference, latest HTTP evidence, response time, failure count, and last checked time. Healthy, redirected, temporary, needs-review, and confirmed-broken states are kept separate. This makes the report more useful than a simple red-or-green list and helps prevent a temporary hosting problem from becoming a misleading permanent warning.

How the broken link checker reduces false positives

One failed request is not enough to condemn a working page. The broken link checker uses bounded timeouts, repeated attempts, and a safe GET fallback when a remote server rejects a HEAD request. Rate-limited or access-restricted responses such as HTTP 403 and 429 remain in Needs Review because the destination may still work normally for real visitors.

Scanning is divided into small resumable WP-Cron batches. Conservative defaults reduce sudden memory use, long PHP requests, database pressure, and excessive outbound traffic. Administrators on resource-limited hosting can lower the batch size. The queue can be paused and resumed without losing the discovered link index.

Evidence available for every reported issue

• Destination URL and the WordPress content where it was found.
• Link, image, video embed, or redirect classification.
• HTTP status, response evidence, retry count, and last checked time.
• Redirect hops and loop evidence when a chain is detected.
• Media Library recovery suggestions when a missing filename has a likely replacement.

Review and fix broken links safely

The plugin never changes or removes content automatically. An authorized administrator must open the issue, review its source and evidence, choose an action, and explicitly confirm it. Available actions include replacing a URL, unlinking it, creating a protected internal redirect, rechecking the destination, or ignoring a reviewed result.

Approved replacements and unlink actions are recorded in Undo History. Before restoring older content, conflict protection checks whether the source was edited again. If newer work exists, the undo is stopped instead of overwriting that work. This safety-first workflow makes the broken link checker suitable for editors, agencies, and site owners who need control over every content change.

Private local scanning without artificial limits

The complete checking engine runs from the website’s own WordPress server. Scan records and settings stay in the WordPress database, and no scan report or administrator telemetry is sent to ToolFlexy. The server necessarily contacts each destination being checked; supported YouTube and Vimeo verification may contact their public oEmbed endpoints.

No ToolFlexy account, credit card, paid subscription, or artificial monthly scan allowance is required. Users can learn more about the rest of the collection on the ToolFlexy Apps directory. For general information about creating and managing links, see the official WordPress link documentation.

Who should use this broken link checker?

It is useful for blogs, business websites, documentation libraries, online portfolios, agency-managed sites, and content-heavy WordPress installations. A new site can use it as a regular quality check, while an established site can use filters, bulk rechecks, CSV reporting, redirect evidence, and WP-CLI commands to manage a larger link inventory efficiently.

Broken Link Checker by ToolFlexy works alongside Yoast SEO, Rank Math, SEOPress, AIOSEO, and ToolFlexy MediaFix without automatically changing another plugin’s data. WordPress 6.5 or later and PHP 7.4 or later are required. The plugin is released under the GPLv2-or-later license and is designed to remain understandable, reviewable, and safe by default.