Broken Link Checker

Linkilo periodically checks all your internal and external links and reports any that are broken (404, 500, dead domain). Find them. Fix them. Replace them with redirects if needed.

What this is

Replaces the abandoned Broken Link Checker WordPress plugin. Same job, modern code, better performance, integrated with the rest of Linkilo.

The checker runs on a schedule you set (daily, weekly, monthly), monitors HTML links, images, YouTube and Vimeo embeds, and emails you when it finds dead links or 404 errors.

Turn it on

1. Go to Linkilo → Settings → Broken Links (under the Tools group).

The page has two cards.

Card 1: Broken link checker

• Run the checker — master toggle. Turning this ON adds the "Broken Link Checker" report to your Linkilo menu.
• Email me when issues are found — toggle + email field. Get notified when new broken links appear.

Card 2: Advanced

• Hide the WP-Cron warning — turn ON if you've set up a real server-level scheduled task instead of relying on WordPress's built-in WP-Cron. Hides the yellow warning Linkilo otherwise shows when WP-Cron seems broken.

Click Save Settings.

View the broken links report

After enabling, go to Linkilo → Broken Link Checker in the WordPress sidebar (top-level Linkilo menu, NOT inside Settings).

You'll see a table with:

• The post the link is IN (source)
• The broken URL
• The HTTP status code (404, 500, dead domain, etc.)
• When it was last checked
• Action buttons

Fix a broken link

For each row, you have options:

• Click the source post title to edit the post in WordPress and fix the link there.
• Mark as ignored for known broken links you want to keep (e.g., a link in a quote you don't want changed).
• Replace with a redirect — set up a redirect in Redirection Manager so the old URL points to a new working one.

Schedule

The checker runs in the background. WordPress's WP-Cron handles scheduling.

Default is daily. To change frequency, that's currently controlled by your WordPress cron configuration — check with your host if you need finer control.

Common Questions

Why is Linkilo saying a link is broken when it works in my browser?

A few common causes:

• Site temporarily down. Wait a few hours and re-check.
• Site blocks bots. Some sites return 403 (forbidden) to anything that's not a human browser, including Linkilo's checker.
• Rate limiting. If Linkilo checks too many links on the same domain too fast, the destination may temporarily block it. Linkilo rate-limits automatically to avoid this, but heavily-protected sites may still block.

For known false alarms, mark the link as ignored — Linkilo won't flag it again.

Will checking thousands of links slow my site down?

No. Checks run in the background on a schedule, not during page loads. The checker does a few requests per minute so it never overloads your server or destination sites.

Does this need WP-Cron working?

Yes. Broken Links uses WordPress's scheduled task system. If your host has broken WP-Cron, broken-link checks won't run automatically.

See Troubleshooting for how to fix WP-Cron issues.

Can I exclude specific URLs from checking?

Yes — use the Hide from orphan report style approach in Content Filters → Skip auto-link & URL changes. Posts in that list are skipped by most Linkilo features including the broken link checker.

For one-off broken links you want to KEEP showing as broken text (no warning), use Mark as ignored on the broken links report itself.

What gets checked — just HTML links, or everything?

The checker monitors:

• HTML <a href> links in post content
• <img src> image URLs
• YouTube embeds
• Vimeo embeds

It does NOT monitor:

• Links inside ACF custom fields (unless your theme renders them in post content)
• External <link> tags in your theme header
• Image URLs in your media library that aren't referenced from post content

How long does a full scan take?

Depends on site size:

• 100 posts → 10–30 minutes
• 1,000 posts → 1–3 hours
• 10,000+ posts → can take 12–24 hours

Run rate-limited so it doesn't overload your server. First scan is the slowest; subsequent scans only check posts that have changed.