Linkvane

Linkvane checks the links in your content for errors and maps how your own pages link to each other. Everything is stored and analysed in your own WordPress database; you do not need an account or an API key.

A link is reported as broken only after it has failed several probes spaced out over time, so a server that is briefly down, a rate limit or a bot challenge (HTTP 429, 403, 999) is not reported as a broken link.

Broken links

• Scans posts and pages out of the box; optionally custom post types, media, approved comments and navigation menus.

• Works in small background batches through WP-Cron (5 posts every 15 minutes by default, both adjustable), using a HEAD request with a GET fallback.

• Reads your content with WP_HTML_Tag_Processor, the HTML parser built into WordPress, and uses the same parser to correct a URL in place.

• Dashboard with status codes, affected content, and grouping by domain or error type (4xx, 5xx, DNS, SSL, timeout, missing anchor).

• Validates #anchor links against the target page and clears the warning once the anchor exists.

• Re-check a link on demand, export the list as CSV, or set rules that rewrite known bad domains during scans.

Internal links (Link Juice)

• Builds a map of the links between your own pages and computes a PageRank-style authority score for each page. This step makes no HTTP requests.

• Lists orphan pages (no internal links pointing to them), dead ends (no internal links out) and pages with a very large number of outbound links.

• Shows the link flow for each page, a site-wide authority graph and an overall score, with suggestions that link straight to the editor.

SEO audit

• Twelve checks: orphan pages, mixed content, canonical tags, redundant links, redirect chains, image alt text and dimensions, image formats, title and excerpt length, heading order and keyword density.

WP-CLI

• wp nlhealth scan, list, recheck, audit and status, plus wp nlhealth juice and wp nlhealth db subcommands, for site owners with shell access.

External services

This plugin does not use any external API or service run by the plugin author. To find broken links it has to contact the web sites your content links to:

Link checks (the sites your content links to)

• What: an HTTP HEAD request (a GET request when the server refuses HEAD) to each URL found in your posts, pages and, if you enable them, comments, menus and media. Links to your own site are checked against your own site.

• Data sent: the URL itself, a browser-style User-Agent header and standard Accept headers. No content from your site and no data about your visitors or users is sent. The receiving server sees your server’s IP address, as with any HTTP request.

• When: during the background scan (WP-Cron, every 15 minutes by default), when you click “Scan Now” on the dashboard or in the post editor, when you re-check a link from the dashboard, when the SEO audit follows your internal links to detect redirect chains, and when you run the wp nlhealth commands.

• Terms and privacy: each linked site’s own terms of service and privacy policy apply. The plugin only contacts sites you already link to; it cannot choose them. You can stop all requests by deactivating the plugin, and exclude a URL with the ignore list on the dashboard.