Broken Links w/ 403 Forbidden Errors

Hi @jtully

Sorry to hear you are having this issue.

Could you send some example of the links that you are testing and we can check on our end too?

The Broken link checker uses the server IP to check the link, if the destination site refuses the connection it will show as broken.

Best Regards
Patrick Freitas

Patrick,

Sorry for the delay.

The home page on the website (www.slsassoc.com) is displaying properly. If you click on the What’s New button (https://slsassoc.com/whats-new) you get what looks like a Table of Contents or Index of the site and have to scroll down through that to get to the actual page and when you get to it, it’s not formatted properly. This just started recently and not being a programmer I’m not sure if it is something I may have done inadvertently or something outside my control. (Note: it’s not happening with all pages, just some.)

Also, the What’s New Button used to open a drop-down list which you could use to select the item you wanted. The drop down quit working several weeks ago, about the same time the broken links started showing up.

If you click on the Menu Button, it opens a page showing multiple broken links. I just realized last night that while the links are showing broken (red line through the link) the ones I’ve tried actually work.

I also noticed that my identifier that is on the end of the link is getting duplicated on some links. Not sure why but I’m going to check those today and see if I can figure out why. Since I add that info to the end of each link manually as the link is created I’m not sure why there would be two. I have never filled out anything telling the system to add it to the end of links.

Thanks,
Jt3

Hi @jtully

Thank you for the link

When I accessed your website I got a 503 page from Wordfence, it worked from a VPN, but just to make sure this security plugin isn’t causing issues on Broken Link Checker, can you please try to disable the Wordfence, go to WordPress > Settings > Link Checker > Advanced > Forced recheck?

Let us know the result you got.
Best Regards
Patrick Freitas

Thanks Patrick,

I’ll let it run for a few hours and see what happens.

jt3

Patrick,
Been just over a half hour and it’s showing 153 broken links with WordFence disabled.
jt3

Hi @jtully

I’ve visited the pages on site that you mentioned and I didn’t any links there marked as broken so either you have disabled marking those links on front-end (there’s an option for this in Broken Link Checker settings) or there are no broken links anymore or… I didn’t look in a right place.

However, I noticed something else that may be directly related: there’s an issue with SSL configuration of the site.

The fact that at the top of the page there is “what appears to be table of contents” and that “drop-down stopped working” is definitely related to that. The browser reports multiple “mixed content” errors.

A “mixed content” error is when the page itself is loaded over SSL-securied HTTPS connection but attempts to load some insecure (over https://) assets. For example: it tries to load some of its CSS or some of its images via non-SSL URL. Browser blocks such request and that often results in multiple issues on site – how it looks, how it works etc (because essential CSS/JS/image files and other resource are blocked).

So this is something I’d strongly suggest to take care of first. To start with, go to “Settings -> General” page in your site’s back-end and make sure that both “WordPress Address (URL)” and “Site Address (URL)” options are using “https://” prefixed URL. If there’s “https://” set instead of “https://”, change it to “https://” and save settings.

Then make sure to re-save permalinks – simply go to “Settings -> Permalinks” page and save current configuration (no need to change anything). After that clear all caches on site and server.

If this solves the problem, you should immediately see change on site – the layout/design should become correct, as it was before, and features such as drop-downs that stopped working, should start working again.

If so, then please try force-rechecking links again.

If they are still reported, then please share the log from Broken Link Checker plugin with us. The simplest way to do this is to upload it to e.g. Google Drive or Dropbox or similar and post direct download link (just make sure to remove any sensitive information from the log first if you spot any).

Best regards,
Adam

Thank you Adam,
I will check the info on the SSL as it was supposed to be activated but wasn’t showing when I open the site.
After I sent the last reply I did do a forced recheck and as soon as it cleared everything I deactivated Broken Link Checker. Looked at the site a couple hours ago and things seem to be displaying correctly except for the What’s New button which isn’t working as a dropdown. (It is however not showing the “Table of Contents” which is better.)
Will see if I can correct the SSL settings later today and if that corrects the https: display on the site, I’ll re-activate Broken Link Checker and see what happens. Should have a response to you either later this evening or sometime tomorrow.
Thanks again for the assistance,
jt3

Hi @jtully

I hope you are doing well.

Feel free to keep us posted with the results.

Best Regards
Patrick Freitas

Patrick,
There were several things I needed to address once the SSL got straightened out. Needed to activate Security Headers and I held off activating several of them until I had a chance to read up on what they do. Have done all of those with the exception of “Configure your site for the HSTS preload list” which I’m not sure if I even need that on my site.
Site Health is telling me that the IMAGICK Module is not installed or disabled. Active Editor however is listed as WP_Image_Editor_GD so do I even need IMAGICK? Could installing / activating it cause other problems?
It’s also telling me I should delete 2 inactive plug ins. One is a child theme creator which I installed but didn’t activate yet. (The one I originally used to create the child theme is no longer supported. I’d delete that one but I’m not sure if deleting it will cause problems with the current child theme.)
The second plugin is Broken Link Checker which I held off re-activating until I have all the problems corrected. (At the rate I’m going that may never happen. VBG
I did install a plugin called Redirection but didn’t activate it until today. Looked at the settings and have no idea what the majority of them are so not activating any of the individual settings until I do.
I don’t have a problem if you need to close out this ticket. It’s probably going to be a week or two before I reactivate Broken Link Checker. (Not a problem with your software but my site.) Once I do get everything corrected I’ll reactivate it and let you know how it goes.
Thanks again to you and Adam for all your help.
Regards,
Jim

Hi Jim

We don’t close any tickets ourselves, that’s usually done automatically (after few months I believe) so you can reply here, or if it gets closed just start a new one and link here for reference ??

I believe that Imagick vs GD depends on PHP version and your server setup and that you don’t require Imagick if you’re running PHP 7.3 with GD. I would suggest double checking with the hosting provider though.

I’m not much familiar with Child Theme creator plugins but based on how Child Themes work those plugins should basically be creating a child theme based on the information of parent theme and once the child theme is actually created they don’t have further use.
If the plugin for child theme is already disabled and you have no problems with the theme then you can probably remove it, I do suggest always having a backup for these cases just to stay on the safe side.

Cheers,
Predrag