TSO Link Inspector

TSO Link Inspector scans all published posts, pages and custom post types for links, then checks each one via HTTP to detect broken links, redirects, insecure HTTP URLs and connection errors. All results are displayed in a dashboard where you can fix links directly without opening the editor.

Key Features

• Scans posts, pages, and any custom post type.
• Detects HTTP errors: 404, 410, 500, DNS failures, SSL errors, timeouts, and redirects.
• Edit URLs inline for post content from the admin panel, or Go to edit for comments, widgets, menus, and terms in their native WordPress screens.
• Smart URL Suggester: automatically tests HTTPS upgrade, follows redirect chains, and tries www/non-www variants.
• Unlink: removes the <a> tag but keeps the visible text.
• Bulk actions: re-check, unlink, mark as OK, or delete multiple links at once.
• Export CSV: export any filtered view to a spreadsheet.
• Per-article view: click any article to see all its links in one place.
• Posts with issues: summary of articles that contain broken, redirected, or unchecked links.
• Internal / External scope tabs to separate same-site and outbound links.
• Quality filters: empty anchor text, generic anchors (“click here”), and links to unpublished posts.
• View post at link: open the front end with the matching link highlighted (post content, plain-text URLs, and comments).
• Plain-text URLs in post content are listed separately (not treated as hyperlinks) with Go to edit to open the post.
• Convert to /path: optional row and bulk action to replace same-site absolute URLs with site-relative paths.
• Dashboard widget with broken/unchecked counts and shortcuts.
• Export CSV and PDF for any filtered view.
• Settings Help tab with full documentation.
• Configurable automatic checks: recheck intervals for OK and broken links, plus hourly batch size.
• HTTP insecure detection: flags active links still using HTTP instead of HTTPS.
• Ignore list: add domains or URL prefixes to never scan or check.
• Continue check / Restart from zero: resume a stopped run, or wipe progress and recheck everything.
• History: Settings tab listing recent URL changes from Edit, Suggest, Convert to /path, and HTTPS (capped log; oldest rows pruned automatically).
• Save when unverified: Edit link / Suggest can still save a URL if this server cannot confirm it (geo-block, bot wall, timeout), with an option to ignore that domain.
• Scan images and iframes: optionally detect broken <img src> and embedded videos.
• Scan user comments: optionally check links in approved comments.
• Custom fields (ACF): optionally scan URL fields added by plugins like Advanced Custom Fields.
• Daily automatic scan and hourly batch check via WP-Cron. Can close the browser while checking.
• Email alerts for fully broken links (no redirect): send one summary after automated checks, or a periodic digest (7 / 15 / 30 days), with an optional notification address.
• Nofollow broken links: automatically adds rel="nofollow" to broken links so search engines ignore them.
• Preserve post dates: editing a link does not update the post modification date.
• Compatible with LiteSpeed Cache, WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, SG Optimizer, Breeze, and Cloudflare.
• Extended scanning: plain-text URLs in posts, Gutenberg block JSON, navigation menus, responsive media (srcset/picture), page-builder data-* attributes, widget sidebars, taxonomy descriptions, Site Editor templates/reusable blocks, and plain URLs in custom fields.
• Third-party sources: register extra link collectors with tsoliin_register_link_source().
• Optional WooCommerce scanning: external product URLs, downloadable files, featured/gallery images, plus a Products with issues view.
• Includes Catalan and Spanish translations.

How it works

1. Click Scan now to extract all links from your posts.
2. Click Check now to send HTTP requests to every URL (runs server-side, you can close the browser). If you stop mid-run, use Continue check to resume, or Restart from zero to wipe progress and recheck everything.
3. Review results using the Broken, Redirect, HTTP insecure and other filter tabs.
4. Fix links using Edit URL, Suggestion, Unlink or Mark as OK from each row. Recent URL changes appear under Settings → History.

Redirect intelligence

The plugin follows the full redirect chain manually so it captures the real final destination, not just the last HTTP code. It automatically ignores trivial redirects (trailing slashes, CDN tokens, WP attachment pages, login walls) to avoid false positives.

External services

This plugin does not send data to servers operated by the plugin author. HTTP and DNS run from your WordPress server only after an administrator clicks Scan now, Check now, Suggestion, Upgrade to HTTPS, or when scheduled checks are enabled in Settings.

HTTP checks of URLs stored on your site

When a check runs, the plugin sends HTTP HEAD and, if needed, HTTP GET requests to each stored http:// or https:// URL. Data sent: the destination URL, a browser-like User-Agent, and standard Accept / Accept-Language headers. Responses are stored only in your WordPress database (status code, redirect URL, redirect chain).

Those destinations are websites already linked from your content, not a service chosen by the plugin. Terms of use and privacy policy: those of each destination site.

DNS lookups

Before requesting a hostname, the plugin may resolve A/AAAA records on the server (dns_get_record / gethostbynamel) so private, loopback, or reserved addresses are not contacted. This is a DNS lookup from your server; post content and user accounts are not sent.

1. Upload the tso-link-inspector folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
2. Activate the plugin from the Plugins menu in WordPress.
3. Go to Tools > TSO Link Inspector.
4. Click Scan now to run the first scan, then Check now to verify all links.

1. 

   Main dashboard with statistics and link list.

2. 

   Filter tabs: All, Broken, Redirect, OK, HTTP insecure, Manual locks, Not checked.

3. 

2.4.9

• Improvement: Last checked now always shows dd/mm/yyyy 24h time, instead of following each site’s own date/time format setting.
• Fix: disabling WooCommerce product scanning no longer leaves “Product” permanently and silently checked in the Content types list; products are only scanned as generic content while WooCommerce scanning is enabled.
• Fix: the “Last checked” column header
• Improvement: added a Type filter dropdown (Link, Image, Iframe, Comment, Menu, etc.) to the link list, independent of the Status/Quality/Internal-External filters and the dashboard stat cards.

2.4.8

• Fix: Mobile and web view in night mode
• Fix: Unresolved template placeholders (e.g. ${sec.image}, {{state.logo}}) are no longer scanned as broken links; a rescan clears any already-stored placeholder rows.

2.4.7

• Fix: Scan deduplication treats Jetpack Photon image URLs (i0.wp.com/i1.wp.com/i2.wp.com) with resize query params (?h=&w=…) as the same resource as the plain file URL (only one row is stored; broken duplicate no longer reappears as “Not checked” after each rescan).
• Fix: URLs extracted from srcset (and the plain-regex link fallback) are HTML-entity-decoded before being stored, so & no longer gets misread as the start of a URL fragment (...jpg#038;w=460&ssl=1) — this was creating extra unchecked duplicate rows for the same Jetpack Photon image on top of the dedup fix above.

2.4.6

• Improvement: Broader Generic anchor detection for English, Spanish, and Catalan (exact-match phrases such as “see more”, “pulsa aquí”, “fes clic aquí”); short ambiguous words like “web” / “entrar” / “visitar” are not added.
• Fix: Bulk actions respect quality/scope filters when removing rows, reload the list when needed, report real delete failures, and block a second bulk run while one is in progress.
• Fix: Check progress total follows the live link count (no inflated “X of Y”); queue chip “unchecked” matches the Unchecked card.
• Improvement: Unlink bulk label/confirm clarified; Help documents Upgrade selected to HTTPS.
• Fix: Edit link HTML preview updates Después when Nueva URL changes (request sequencing; failed replace fallback).
• Fix: Edit link can save absolute↔relative spelling and #fragment-only changes (no longer “No changes to save”).
• Fix: Ignore-domain option is disabled for relative /path URLs (never suggests ignoring the site host).
• Fix: Post-revision setting: avoid duplicate revisions when enabled; toast only when a revision was really created; help text covers HTTPS and Unlink.
• Fix: Convert to /path: row and bulk use the same eligibility (post/meta/custom menu only); settings copy matches behavior.
• Fix: Preserve modified date no longer disables WordPress auto-revisions; nofollow matching tolerates spacing around href/rel.
• Fix: Delete all plugin records also clears History, abandons paused scan/check jobs (no ghost Continue), and clears last-check timestamps / immediate email queue.
• Fix: ACF/Meta scan: support Clone fields and Link fields returning a URL string; extract img/iframe/data-* URLs from HTML in meta; clarify SEO key exclusions.
• Fix: Additional link sources: scan block-theme Navigation (wp_navigation); extract images/media in widgets/terms/templates; Media Image widgets; clearer Settings labels (drop “Phase 2”).
• Fix: Stop calling attachment_url_to_postid() on every image during scan classification; prefer wp-image-ID / path lookup with request cache.
• Fix: History enforces the 500-row cap after legacy table migration and when opening the History tab; prune only runs after a successful history insert.
• Fix: Auto theme no longer flashes night→day on refresh near dusk (boot script now uses sunrise/sunset like the UI, not a fixed 07:00–20:00 window).
• Improvement: “Save even if…” checkbox wording matches HTTPS verification gate.

See changelog.txt in the plugin folder for older versions