How Link Checker Pro checks a WordPress site

Link Checker Pro uses an external service to crawl your WordPress site and report broken internal and external links, along with redirects. The crawler visits pages like a regular visitor and handles the crawl work, keeping computation on your site low. It works with WordPress plugins out of the box, supports Polylang, and may also work with WPML.

The crawler respects robots.txt, including its crawl-delay directive. A long delay can make a crawl take longer. Your hosting provider may block the crawler, and it cannot access a local development site on a private network.

Checks and results

• Check embedded internal and external pictures for broken files.
• Check whether embedded YouTube videos are available.
• Schedule a check once a day and receive a summary by email.
• Export results as a CSV file for review, filtering, or sharing.
• Use form login support to check protected pages, such as membership areas.
• Fetch saved results again from the Link Checker server, including from another visitor or browser, without running another check.

The free version checks up to 500 URLs. Image and video checks, CSV export, scheduling, and form login are Pro functions.

External service and access

Your site sends its URL and the fact that it uses WordPress to a server operated by the add-on developer. That server crawls the site and returns the results. If your host blocks the crawler, it may not be able to access your site. The crawler also follows your robots.txt rules, so those rules and the crawl-delay setting affect what it can check and how quickly it proceeds.

Setup and requirements

Install and activate the extension in WordPress, open Link Checker from the sidebar, then choose “Check your website” to start a crawl. To include protected pages, provide the form login details they require. Once the crawl finishes, review the results or export them as CSV. Enable the daily scheduler and email summary if you want recurring checks.

The stated requirements are WordPress 4.7 or newer and PHP 5.6 or newer.