=== Broken Link Checker by AIOSEO – Easily Fix/Monitor Internal and External links ===
Contributors: aioseo, smub, benjaminprojas
Tags: broken links, internal link, external link, check links, seo
Tested up to: 6.8
Requires at least: 5.7
Requires PHP: 5.6
Stable tag: 1.2.6
License: GPLv3 or later
License URI: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt

Broken Link Checker by AIOSEO ensures all links on your website are working. Check your site for broken links and easily fix them to improve SEO.

== Description ==

=== Broken Link Checker by AIOSEO - Easily Fix/Monitor Internal and External links ===

The Broken Link Checker by AIOSEO for WordPress is a must-have tool for website owners and managers. Its granular control and detailed reporting features ensure that your website's links are healthy and functioning correctly, providing your visitors with a seamless browsing experience. With this plugin, you can detect and fix broken links quickly and easily, ensuring that your website is always up-to-date and running smoothly.

Unlike other broken link checker plugins, **AIOSEO's Broken Link Checker is offered as a SaaS and requires an AIOSEO account**. This means that the tool is hosted on the AIOSEO servers, rather than being installed on your website's server. **This approach has several benefits, including preventing your server IP from being blocked, and avoiding hosting providers from forcing you to upgrade** due to increased resource usage.

By using Broken Link Checker as a SaaS, you can rest assured that your website's performance won't be negatively affected, and that you'll have access to the most up-to-date version of the service at all times. Additionally, it's incredibly user-friendly and provides actionable recommendations for fixing broken links, making it an essential tool for maintaining the health and functionality of your website.

When you install this plugin, you’ll have the opportunity to register for a free account that includes scanning up to 250 internal links. Those 250 link credits will renew every month for free, and you’ll only be upgraded if you scan more than 250 links during the month. Or, if you already have an <a href="https://aioseo.com/pricing-broken-link-checker/" target="_blank">AIOSEO Broken Link Checker subscription</a>, you can simply connect this plugin to it.

=== Link Monitoring ===

The Broken Link Checker plugin monitors all internal and external links on your WordPress website, ensuring that they are functioning correctly. It crawls your website periodically and checks each link to ensure that it is not broken. The plugin will also show whether or not a link worked properly (200 status) or worked with redirects (301/302 status) or was broken (404 status).

=== Granular Control ===

The plugin provides granular control over which post types and statuses it will monitor. You can choose which post types, such as pages, posts, or custom post types, the plugin will monitor. You can also choose which post statuses, such as published, draft, or pending review, the plugin will monitor to look for broken links.

=== URL Exclusions ===

You can exclude certain URLs from being checked by the plugin. For example, if you have a third-party tracking link that redirects to another website, you can exclude it from being checked.

=== Features ===

* Monitors all internal and external links on your WordPress website.
* Detects valid links, broken links and redirects.
* Provides granular control over which post types and statuses the plugin will monitor.
* Allows you to exclude certain URLs from being checked.
* Schedules checks to run automatically at regular intervals.
* Excludes links that are broken from search engine crawling.
* Allows inline editing of links to reduce time spent updating each post.

=== Credits ===

This plugin is created by <a href="https://benjaminrojas.net/" rel="friend" title="Benjamin Rojas">Benjamin Rojas</a> and <a href="https://syedbalkhi.com/" rel="friend" title="Syed Balkhi">Syed Balkhi</a>.

=== Branding Guideline ===

AIOSEO&reg; is a registered trademark of Semper Plugins LLC. When writing about the WordPress SEO plugin by AIOSEO, please use the following format.

* AIOSEO (correct)
* All in One SEO (correct)
* AIO SEO (incorrect)
* All in 1 SEO (incorrect)
* AISEO (incorrect)

=== What's Next ===

If you like our Broken Link Checker plugin, then consider checking out our other projects:

* <a href="https://aioseo.com/" rel="friend" title="AIOSEO">AIOSEO</a> - The Best WordPress SEO plugin & toolkit to improve your SEO rankings in search results.
* <a href="https://optinmonster.com/" rel="friend" title="OptinMonster">OptinMonster</a> - Get more email subscribers with the most popular conversion optimization plugin for WordPress.
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* <a href="https://www.seedprod.com/" rel="friend" title="SeedProd">SeedProd</a> - Create beautiful landing pages with our powerful drag & drop landing page builder.
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* <a href="https://searchwp.com/">SearchWP</a> – The most advanced custom WordPress search plugin to improve WordPress search quality.
* <a href="https://affiliatewp.com/">AffiliateWP</a> – #1 affiliate management plugin for WordPress. Add a referral program to your online store.
* <a href="https://wpsimplepay.com/">WP Simple Pay</a> – #1 Stripe payments plugin for WordPress. Start accepting one-time or recurring payments without a shopping cart.
* <a href="https://easydigitaldownloads.com/">Easy Digital Downloads</a> – The best WordPress eCommerce plugin to sell digital products (eBooks, software, music, and more).
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* <a href="https://sugarcalendar.com/">Sugar Calendar</a> – A simple event calendar plugin for WordPress that's both easy and powerful.

Visit <a href="http://www.wpbeginner.com/" rel="friend" title="WPBeginner">WPBeginner</a> to learn from our <a href="http://www.wpbeginner.com/category/wp-tutorials/" rel="friend" title="WordPress Tutorials">WordPress Tutorials</a> and find out about the <a href="http://www.wpbeginner.com/category/plugins/" rel="friend" title="Best WordPress Plugins">best WordPress plugins</a>.


== Changelog ==

**New in Version 1.2.6**

* New: Added Link Distribution dashboard widget to the WordPress admin dashboard.
* New: Added reminder emails to inform users when Broken Link Checker is not connected.
* Updated: All BLC plans, including free, now support external links.
* Updated: The free BLC plan now includes 50 more links for free, for a total of 250.
* Updated: Added warning messages when indexed link count is larger than plan link quota or link quota is (almost) depleted.
* Updated: Added hook to filter URLs when they are indexed to add compatibility with WP Offload Media.
* Updated: Hardened REST API routes and added permission checks to improve security.
* Fixed: Link scan sometimes getting stuck if AIOSEO is not installed due to missing function.

**New in Version 1.2.5**

* Fixed: Link status scan sometimes getting stuck due to URL hash collisions.
* Fixed: Free plan not indicating that external links are not supported.

**New in Version 1.2.4**

* Updated: Hardening of ORDER BY/LIMIT clauses for database queries.

**New in Version 1.2.3**

* Updated: Added support for updating/removing relative URLs.

**New in Version 1.2.2**

* New: Added support for indexing and checking media URLs.
* Updated: Improved link removal process to increase rate of success.
* Fixed: Link Status row now closes after performing a table action to ensure no data leaks through to the next row.

**New in Version 1.2.1**

* New: Added a "Not Checked Yet" filter for new, unchecked links to the links table.
* New: Added an alert to the link info modal to indicate the date when the link will be rechecked.
* New: Added an admin notice to inform users when they have not connected Broken Link Checker yet.
* Fixed: Image URIs could cause catastrophical regex backtracking, freezing up the site.
* Fixed: Links with leading/trailing spaces in their URL or anchor text could not be edited or unlinked.
* Fixed: Broken links sometimes not highlighted for pages and CPTs. 

**New in Version 1.2.0**

* New: Broken Links Highlighter - The new highlighter marks broken links on the frontend of your website, making it easier for you to find and fix them.
* New: AIOSEO Redirects Integration - BLC now integrates with AIOSEO Redirects so that you can easily redirect broken links to a working URL.
* Updated: Added additional inline error alerts for better user experience.
* Fixed: URLs with encoded characters could not be scanned because they were incorrectly hashed in the database.
* Fixed: URLs for media files (with the exception of images) are no longer indexed.
* Fixed: Unified URL rows now correctly respect the included post types, included post status, excluded posts and excluded domain settings.
* Fixed: When deleting a post, the confirmation modal now correctly shows up again.

**New in Version 1.1.2**

* Fixed: PHP error causing settings screen not to load when using default excluded domains value.

**New in Version 1.1.1**

* New: You can now exclude specific domains from being checked through the settings.
* Fixed: Limit Modified Date setting sometimes not working because WordPress Core was overriding it.
* Fixed: PHP notice when indexing links due to missing URL scheme.

**New in Version 1.1.0**

* New: Unified Links - Duplicate links are now grouped together in the UI for an improved user experience.
* Updated: Added support for PHP 8.2.
* Updated: Added sorting for the URL column in the Broken Links report table.
* Updated: Added a progress bar for the link status scan.
* Updated: Added a confirmation modal to prevent user from trashing posts by mistake.
* Updated: Improved performance of rechecking links in bulk.
* Updated: Improved general performance of database queries.
* Updated: "Broken Links" is now the default table filter after the link status scan has been completed.
* Fixed: Various issues where updating, removing or force-rechecking certain links sometimes failed.
* Fixed: Connecting to remote server sometimes hanged until the user refreshed the page.

**See our [changelog on aioseo.com](https://aioseo.com/changelog/broken-link-checker/?utm_source=wprepo&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=blc) for previous releases.**

== Upgrade Notice ==

= 1.2.6 =

This update adds major improvements and bug fixes.