DevDome Link Monitor – Broken Link Checker & 404 Monitor

Broken Link Checker and 404 Monitor for WordPress DevDome Link Monitor is a broken link checker and 404 monitor for WordPress that helps you find and fix broken links, detect dead URLs, and track 404 errors directly from your WordPress dashboard. Scan the links in your published content, identify genuinely broken URLs, see which missing pages visitors and crawlers are hitting, and fix link problems without opening every post by hand. Unlike aggressive link scanners, DevDome Link Monitor verifies uncertain failures before it marks a link as broken. That reduces false positives caused by temporary server errors, rate limits, anti-bot protection and connection problems, so the broken link list you get is one you can act on. Find Broken Links Scan the links in your published WordPress content and see at a glance which URLs are:

• Healthy
• Broken
• Redirected (with the final URL and hop count)
• Unverified (timeouts, DNS failures, TLS errors, refused connections)
• Could not verify (401, 403 after a full GET, 429 rate limited, 999 anti-bot)

The link checker covers internal and external links in one pass, so you do not need to open every URL yourself. A link is never marked broken because a single request failed. It has to fail twice in checks separated in time, and a link that recovers starts from a clean slate. This keeps temporary errors, rate limiting, anti-bot protection, timeouts and DNS hiccups out of your broken list. Fix Broken Links Fix broken links directly from the review table in your WordPress dashboard:

• Edit URL: the new address is written into every post that contains that exact link
• Unlink: the link is removed and the anchor text stays
• Re-check now
• Dismiss links you keep on purpose
• Review redirects with their final destination

Every content change goes through WordPress in the normal way, so revisions apply, and it needs your edit permission on every affected post. Each change is recorded in an audit trail. Monitor 404 Errors The built-in 404 monitor is always on and records every request for a missing URL on your site:

• The requested path, with the query string removed
• Hit counts, first seen and last seen
• The last referrer and, unless you turn it off, the last user agent
• Human hits and bot hits kept apart, using known crawler patterns

Find the URLs visitors are trying to reach but cannot. Each 404 path gets a redirect suggestion matched against your real post and page slugs, a one-click redirect if DevDome Redirect Manager is active, or a copy-ready .htaccess rule. Ignore paths, delete rows, export to CSV, and let old entries purge automatically after 30, 90 or 180 days. Link Health at a Glance The Overview tab shows a link health score, the number of links checked, healthy links, broken links and redirects, the 404 monitor's human and bot totals, and a health trend over the last 12 scans. Lightweight Background Scanning Scans run in small batches instead of checking every URL at once, with at most two links per host per batch, so your site stays responsive. Start, pause, resume or cancel a scan at any time. It keeps running in the background while the screen is open or through WP-Cron, and an optional weekly or monthly rescan can email you a summary of newly broken links only. Reduce False Positives Not every failed automated request means a link is dead. Some sites block automated requests, rate-limit scanners, require authentication, return temporary server errors, reject HEAD requests, or time out now and then. DevDome Link Monitor keeps those uncertain results separate as "Unverified" or "Could not verify" instead of calling them broken, so the broken list stays short and true. What Is Scanned, and What Is Not Scanned: the saved content (post_content) of published posts in public post types (attachments excluded), meaning <a href> and <img src>, including markup inside block comments. Internal and external URLs are both checked. Not scanned: widgets, menus, theme and customizer options, post meta and custom fields, srcset candidates, oEmbed and iframe targets, the bodies of reusable or synced patterns that are not inlined in the post, and drafts, private or scheduled content. This is not a whole-site crawler. Why Use DevDome Link Monitor?

• Find broken links in your WordPress content
• Fix broken URLs from the dashboard
• Monitor 404 errors with human and bot hits kept apart
• Detect dead URLs and redirect chains
• Fewer false positives: uncertain links are reviewed separately
• Checks run in small background batches
• Export 404 results to CSV
• No cloud account needed, no page or link limits, everything runs on your own server

How Link Checking Works

• Links are discovered in the saved content of published posts, then checked in chunks that are resumable, pausable and cancelable, driven by your browser while the screen is open or by WP-Cron.
• Each link is requested with HEAD first. A size-capped GET (128 KB) is sent when the server rejects or gates HEAD, and before any HEAD failure is recorded, because some servers mishandle HEAD while GET works.
• Redirects are followed manually, up to 5 hops with loop detection, and reported with the final URL and hop count.
• Broken means two failures in checks separated in time (15 seconds by default). Two failures inside the same processing burst do not count as independent evidence.
• Timeouts, DNS failures, TLS errors and refused connections become "Unverified" with the reason. 401, 403 after a full GET, 429 and 999 become "Could not verify". None of these are ever counted as broken.
• Low default budgets and per-host spacing: at most 2 links per host per tick. Check timeout, posts per batch and links per batch are adjustable in Settings.

AI and Agent Support On WordPress 6.9 and newer, DevDome Link Monitor registers WordPress Abilities covering the whole plugin: link health summary, every checked link with its pages and every filter, one link, the 404 log with every filter, redirect suggestions, scan start (full or recheck), pause, resume and cancel, progress and history, recheck one link, replace a link URL in content, unlink, dismiss, ignore or delete a 404, run the retention sweep, exports, settings (read and update), the error and change logs, dismiss the last error and recount the summary. Compatible AI agents and MCP clients can discover and use these abilities when the site exposes them, for example through the official WordPress MCP Adapter. Every ability runs the same code as the plugin screens under the same capability checks; content edits keep the per-post edit permission check.

1.7.2

• Updates now work when the plugin folder belongs to another system user (shared DevDome core 1.7.4): a folder installed from a root shell or by an AI agent used to fail every update with "Could not move the old version", and an uploaded zip kept the old version. The plugin is copied to a web-owned folder right before WordPress replaces it, the old folder is kept hidden and recorded so the DevDome Malware Scanner recognises it, and the update goes through the hub, the Plugins screen, bulk updates, uploads and automatic updates alike.

1.7.1

• Connect fix (shared DevDome core 1.6.6): the connect claim now waits up to 30 seconds and keeps the handshake for 20 minutes so a refresh retries it, the DevDome hub shows why a connect failed with a Try again link, and the verify file is served through a query form for hosts that answer /.well-known/ before WordPress.

1.7.0

• WordPress Abilities API: 23 abilities covering every feature (links, 404s, scans, edit URL, unlink, dismiss, 404 ignore and delete, purge, exports, settings, logs). Empty-input abilities refuse unexpected arguments cleanly.

1.6.0

• WordPress Abilities API support (WordPress 6.9+): six abilities for AI agents and MCP clients: get-link-summary, get-broken-links, get-404s, get-scan-progress, run-link-scan, recheck-link. Same code and capability checks as the plugin screens.

1.5.4

• Settings: every option now shows a one line hint under the control, with the info icon holding the full explanation, the same layout as DevDome Malware Scanner.
• DevDome Dashboard: installing another DevDome plugin from the dashboard no longer activates it, you activate it yourself from its card. Output escaping tightened.

1.5.3

• Shared DevDome library updated to core 1.6.3: the DevDome Dashboard now reads the current plugin catalog (names, descriptions, logos, links) from devdome.com once every 12 hours, and other DevDome plugins can be installed from WordPress.org in one click.

1.5.2

• First tab is now called Overview, in line with the other DevDome plugins. Old links to the Dashboard tab still open it.

1.5.1

• Scan history pruning now binds every id in its IN (...) lists through $wpdb->prepare().

1.5.0

• First WordPress.org release.
• Broken link scanner with a two-strike rule: a link is only called broken after two separate failures, and 401, 403, 429 and anti-bot answers are reported as blocked, never broken.
• Passive 404 monitor with human hits and bot hits kept apart, redirect suggestions on request, .htaccess rule copy and Redirect Manager hand-off, CSV export.
• Edit, unlink or dismiss a link from the list; every content change is verified against the saved post and needs edit rights on that post.
• Scans run in bounded chunks and finish on their own, with a closed browser and without visitors, and recover from an interrupted finish.
• Optional email summary of newly broken links, sent by DevDome to the connected account email, counts only.
• Outbound checks refuse private and reserved addresses and pin the resolved address to the connection; requires the cURL extension.