Redirects tab

Hello @woodypad !

Hope you’re doing great today!

1. In the Redirects tab it found about 900, did your plugin fix them? Does it somehow automatically?

By default the plugin will not attempt to fix the redirects, however you can enable the “Fix redirect” option in Settings >> Link Checker >> Advanced tab and this will allow you to fix all possible to fix links from the list in the Redirects tab.

2. the Warnings and Frozen tab, what do they indicate?

BLC will show a notice (which is dismissible) on the Warnings page:

The “Warnings” page lists problems that are probably temporary or suspected to be false positives.
Warnings that persist for a long time will usually be reclassified as broken links.

This means that sometimes a link may be flagged but the plugin thinks those are not 100% bad – we suggest to watch those over time and see if they actually need fixing or not. Those are usually considered minor issues.

Frozen – possibly autocorrection from Broken – those are links which lead to nonexistent, inaccessible sites or pages and should be checked/edited or unlinked if there’s no way to fix the link anymore.

3. You have an option to delete all plugin data and the data it collects, would it be useful if you wanted to delete it in the future?

Hmm, I don’t see an option for that in the plugin settings. But maybe I misunderstood something – can you share some additional details about this question?

4. I also previously installed the Redirections plugin, can your plugin conflict?
5. Do both plugins do the same thing, but differently? or can they coexist?

There should be no conflict, actually BLC can help discover links which should be redirected in the page’s source and allow you to fix them (as per point 1).

The plugins perform mostly different functions, though there will be some overlap. I don’t think this will cause any issues, however it’s necessary to investigate the detected links and make sure there’s no redirect loop anywhere.

It’s usually recommended to avoid having two of the same feature being enabled on two different plugins at the same time as there is always a potential for conflict and rarely 2x the benefit. Though we haven’t had any reports of issues between those two plugins lately.

Warm regards,
Pawel

Hello
thanks for your reply.
I like your plugin and it looks very neat to me.

Returning to the questions.
I use the other plugin just to simply redirect missing links by hand. I can also do this with your plugin, right?
When I change a link in the list for example in “Broken Links” does it create a 301 redirect?
That is, will the old link be directed to the new one?

The redirects plugin, I also use it to automatically redirect existing links that are modified by the authors. Your plugin also works in this case, create a redirect, right?

For step 1,
strangely, “Fix redirect” is not active, yet I have a list of redirects.

For step 3,
I was just wondering if a feature was available that allows you to delete all plugin data in case of uninstallation, in case something goes wrong.

Thank you

Hi @woodypad

When I change a link in the list for example in “Broken Links” does it create a 301 redirect?
That is, will the old link be directed to the new one?

No, when you change the link (use “Edit” option) it will simply edit the link and actually change it, not set redirect.

That’s similar to what “Fix redirect” feature does. It doesn’t create additional redirect. It just takes the URL that link redirects to (so the actual, real end-URL) and replaces the one on site with it – so clicking on a link would take user directly to that “end URL” instead of redirecting.

For step 1,
strangely, “Fix redirect” is not active, yet I have a list of redirects.

This is correct and expected. Plugin will detect and report redirected links. The option (in Advanced settings) only activates additional “Fix redirect” option which you’ll see when you hover over such reported redirected link on links’ list.

For step 3,
I was just wondering if a feature was available that allows you to delete all plugin data in case of uninstallation, in case something goes wrong.

There’s no specific option for that but plugin deletes its tables from DB out of the box upon removal – if you remove it via “plugins” page in site’s back-end.

Best regards,
Adam

OK thanks Adam.

The tab called Redirects led me astray, I thought, to redirect the link as a 301.
Instead it is a tab that indicates the links that have been modified and corrected within the site. So all indexed external links will remain broken.

So the Redirects plugin, it doesn’t do the same job as your plugin can’t overlap in functions, I think …

If you have so many links to redirect, hundreds or thousands, once corrected with your plugin inside the site, do you recommend a method to reconnect them to the distributed links?

Thank you

Hi @woodypad

So the Redirects plugin, it doesn’t do the same job as your plugin can’t overlap in functions, I think …

I think they won’t overlap. Unless you e.g. do something like this:

– use your redirect plugin to redirect some URL that’s already linked from your site
– then Broken Link Checker detects that this link leads to redirected URL
– then you use fix redirects option
– then update redirect in redirect for the same URL in the redirect plugin
– so Broken Link Checker will again detect this link as redirected…
– and so on…

That’d be sort of a “vicious circle” but I’d say it’s rather unlikely or even “unrealistic” scenario ??

If you have so many links to redirect, hundreds or thousands, once corrected with your plugin inside the site, do you recommend a method to reconnect them to the distributed links?

I’m not quite sure what do you mean by “distributed” in this case but I’m also not seeing need to set redirects due to “fix redirect” feature. I mean, let me give you example:

– you have link to “https://something.com” in your post on your “site.net”
– but when you visit “https://something.com” it redirects to “https://somethingelse.org”
– the link on your site will still work, whether you fix it or not
– but Broken Link Checker will report it as “redirect” and let you “fix redirect”
– if you use “fix redirect” what will happen is that the “https://something.com” URL in in link in your post on your “site.net” will be replaced with the “https://somethingelse.org” URL (to which “https://something.com” would redirect otherwise)

So ultimately, the only thing that happens is that if visitor clicks on the link of the site, their browser goes directly to correct URL rather than going to “wrong” URL and getting redirected to correct one then. That’s it.

I’m not quite sure how this relates to your redirect plugin here as it’s a different thing, if I correctly understand the case.

Kind regards,
Adam

Hi Adam,
thanks again for your reply, i still have some doubts.
What you said worries me a little and feels real to me.

I’ll explain briefly.
In the site I’m following, I had to remove some changes that affected and changed the links and were creating problems with future updates. Being a blog with thousands of articles, many of these that are indexed and linked on social media are now broken.

I was using the redirect plugin to figure out what they are, why it logs 404 errors, and try to redirect them to new links. But there are so many and I was looking for an alternative solution.

Your plugin, I wanted to use it to look for internal links to the site in the various articles and pages, so that I can correct them.
The fact that some of it already does this automatically is fantastic!
But what you said worries me a lot, that there could be infinite loops between the two plugins.

I wonder if I should install both and if this could be an additional problem in the future.

One last question, if I use your plugin to fix internal links, if I decide to uninstall it, would the fixes disappear?
Or are the changes to the links made on the actual pages? and therefore they would remain.

Thank you

Hi @woodypad

Thank you for response!

I don’t think you should worry about that. I may have complicated things a bit too much. I sometimes tend to “overexplain” on some things and the scenario that I described (regarding those “infinite loops”) is quite “unrealistic”. For it to happen you would really need to do the same two actions over and over again manually and or purpose which is very unlikely to happen – since you know what you are doing.

I’m sorry for making you worry about it!

One last question, if I use your plugin to fix internal links, if I decide to uninstall it, would the fixes disappear?

No, they won’t.

Or are the changes to the links made on the actual pages? and therefore they would remain.

Yes. It’s pretty much like if you’d edit page/post yourself and manually adjust the link. Except here you it just takes a click and plugin’s script does it for you.

Best regards,
Adam

Helllo @woodypad ,

We haven’t heard from you for a while now, so it looks like you don’t have any more questions for us.

Feel free to re-open this ticket if needed.

Kind regards
Kasia