Local version works well, saves time and cost

  • This plugin makes it easy to find and correct broken links at my website. I especially like the results page, that lets me edit the broken link and text directly, without having to edit the page separately.

    Some settings I chose differently from the defaults:

    • I turned off the custom formatting of broken links, because this shows on the front end which links are broken, and that’s not what I want my visitors to see;
    • I set the timing to check the links weekly, not daily;
    • I turned off “suggest alternatives to broken links,” because mainly the suggestions were to links in the Wayback machine. Whereas at my websites, links break mostly because external sites change their URLs, which requires a human to visit the external site or Google to find where the page moved to.

    I took one star off this plugin’s rating ONLY because I don’t like the new “Cloud” version, which requires a login to WPMU DEV. I really appreciate the useful WordPress articles posted for free by WPMU DEV, but the “Local” version of this plugin is all I need and I find the emphasis on the Cloud version to be distracting.

    Formerly, I checked links using the paid version of the Screaming Frog SEO Spider, which is a comprehensive and wonderful tool – especially because it finds oversized images and images without alt text, and can make XML site maps for non-WordPress websites. Both tools show the source page of the bad link, but the Broken Link Checker shows the results and lets you fix them all on one page — partly because it has LESS features than the SEO spider to show me. However the spider is too expensive for me, since I need the paid version’s features for only for one website.

    Do be patient about the time the Broken Link Checker plugin needs. It runs in the background so as to not overuse system resources. The plugin did take a couple of HOURS to check the 1756 unique URLs it found when I first installed it at my website. But even the SEO spider took some 15 minutes to check this same website, and unless I turned on the spider’s throttling feature, its server load brought down the website.

    • This topic was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by mattsson.
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  • Plugin Support Williams – WPMU DEV Support

    (@wpmudev-support8)

    Hi @mattsson

    Thank you for your kind words and this comprehensive and informative review.

    I’m glad that you like the plugin and its local version.

    The “cloud engine” is in no way “obligatory” and even with connection to WPMU DEV it’s still free but the connection is required because the “cloud” version works in a completely different way and there’s just a need to connect to API.

    But of course using the “Local” one is also fine and that does not require any connection to our API. We’re very happy that it Broken Link Checker goes so well in your comparison with another tool – thank you for sharing this!

    Have a great day,
    Adam

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