VLink Broken Links Scout Wordpress Plugin - Rating, Reviews, Demo & Download

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Free

Plugin Description

VLink Broken Links Scout finds and repairs broken internal links inside your WordPress content. It reads post_content directly, so it never crawls the front-end and never generates synthetic traffic against your server.

The plugin works in three steps:

1. Scan: extract every internal href from selected post types and store the URL list in a dedicated database table.
2. Check: send an HTTP HEAD request (or a Range-GET fallback) to each unique URL and record the response code.
3. Fix: replace permanent redirects (301, 308) and broken URLs with new destinations, in batches, with an automatic rollback snapshot.

Detection

• 404 Not Found and 410 Gone responses are flagged as broken.
• 301 Moved Permanently and 308 Permanent Redirect are flagged as safe to auto-replace per RFC 9110 section 15.4.
• 302 Found, 303 See Other, and 307 Temporary Redirect are flagged as informational only; the plugin will not auto-replace them because the original URL is still authoritative.

Repair workflow

• Per-link change: click Change link on any row to open a modal that shows the URL with its current status badge, suggests the redirect target when available, and validates the new URL before saving.
• Bulk wizard: filter by status, choose an action (replace redirects, upgrade HTTP to HTTPS, or mark safe), preview the diff, then apply.
• Automatic backup: every fix operation creates a snapshot of the affected post_content. Restore or delete sessions from the Backups tab.
• Audit history: every change is logged with old URL, new URL, posts touched, user, and timestamp in the History tab.

Architecture

• AJAX-driven batch processing. Long-running work runs in chunks of 8 to 50 items per request, with retries on timeout. Scans never block visitor requests.
• WP-Cron scheduled scans with Daily, Weekly, Monthly, and Manual frequencies. Optional HTML email report after each scheduled run.
• Three custom database tables, all dropped on uninstall:
  • {prefix}vbls_links — URL inventory.
  • {prefix}vbls_backups — post_content snapshots taken before each fix.
  • {prefix}vbls_history — chronological audit log of every link mutation.
• Filter and action hooks are listed below.

Standards and compliance

• RFC 3986 (URI Generic Syntax): case normalization, default port omission, dot-segment removal, percent-encoding normalization, fragment stripping.
• RFC 9110 (HTTP Semantics): HEAD with Range-GET fallback on 405, redirect classification, conforming User-Agent header.
• WordPress Coding Standards (WPCS).
• Plugin Check (PCP): readme, security, i18n, and performance rules.
• WordPress.org Detailed Plugin Guidelines.
• OWASP: input sanitization, output escaping, CSV formula-injection mitigation, nonce-based CSRF protection.
• WCAG 2.1 AA: keyboard navigation, ARIA labels, focus management, color contrast.
• GDPR: no personal data is collected, stored, or transmitted (see Privacy section).

Filters and actions

The plugin exposes the following hooks for integrators:

• vbls_sslverify (filter, bool): default true. Return false to allow self-signed certificates on staging.
• vbls_user_agent (filter, string): override the outgoing User-Agent header.
• vbls_strip_query_on_storage (filter, bool): default true. Return false to preserve query strings when storing internal URLs (useful when query parameters are semantically meaningful).
• vbls_url_fixed (action): fires after a URL replacement. Arguments: $old, $new, $affected.
• vbls_check_complete (action): fires after a full check pass. Argument: report rows.

Privacy

VLink Broken Links Scout does not collect, store, or transmit personal data about visitors or administrators. There are NO third-party API calls — the plugin is fully self-contained.

Outbound requests:

• The plugin issues HTTP HEAD requests (or Range-GET as a fallback per RFC 9110 section 9.3.2) to URLs that appear in post_content to read their status code.
• The outgoing User-Agent is Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; VLinkBrokenLinksScout/<version>; +<home_url>) per RFC 9110 section 10.1.5.
• No cookies, no Referer header from the administrator, and no request body are sent.
• SSL verification defaults to enabled and can be toggled with the vbls_sslverify filter for staging environments.
• No telemetry, no call-home, no analytics. Nothing leaves your server except the HTTP HEAD probes described above.

Local data:

• {prefix}vbls_links stores URLs found in your own content; it contains no visitor data.
• {prefix}vbls_backups stores post_content snapshots created immediately before a fix; restoration overwrites the current value.
• vbls_settings stores plugin configuration (selected post types, schedule, email address).

Email:

• When the scheduled-scan email report is enabled, an HTML summary is sent to the configured admin address via wp_mail. The body contains only URLs from your site.

Screenshots

1. 

   Overview dashboard with link statistics and progress bar.

2. 

   Links table with filter pills, search, and row actions.

3. 

   Fix URL modal that auto-fills the redirect target.

4. 

   Bulk Update wizard, step 1: filter.

5. 

   Bulk Update wizard, step 3: preview before apply.

6. 

   Backup and Restore tab.

7. 

   Settings page.

8. 

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