Waymender – Broken Link Checker, 404 Monitor & Redirects

When an archived copy replaces a link, rel=”nofollow” (on by default) is added to the link’s existing rel value, never duplicated. That applies to HTML links in post content, excerpts, widgets, term descriptions, comments and HTML custom fields; menu items, custom fields that hold only a URL, and page-builder data keep their rel unchanged.

3. 404 log and redirects. Pages visitors could not find are logged with hit counts, referrers and a suggested target (fuzzy slug matching, date-prefix and case rules). One click turns an entry into a 301/302/307/410 rule. Wildcards, CSV import/export, and automatic hand-off when the Redirection plugin is active. Hit counts are sampled: each rule counts at most one hit per minute. To keep a flood of random URLs from filling the database, the 404 log records at most 120 hits per clock minute across the whole site (filterable with waymender_404_writes_per_minute ); further 404s in that minute are not logged or counted.

Built to be light

• Custom tables, no post meta bloat, automatic pruning
• Action Scheduler queue with WP-Cron fallback
• Adaptive batch size, per-host throttling, Retry-After respected
• Detects blocked outbound HTTP and says so instead of reporting everything as broken
• WP-CLI: wp waymender scan , wp waymender links , wp waymender fix (run it with --user=<administrator> ; it refuses to run without a user, and the fix is logged under that user), wp waymender 404 , wp waymender redirect

Hooks for developers

waymender_http_args, `waymender_excluded_hosts`, `waymender_antibot_hosts`, `waymender_extract_sources`, `waymender_extracted_links`, `waymender_status_for_response`, `waymender_before_fix`, `waymender_after_fix`, `waymender_404_ignore`, `waymender_suggestions`, `waymender_scan_started`, `waymender_scan_complete`, `waymender_url_checked`, `waymender_capability`, `waymender_404_writes_per_minute`, `waymender_redirection_active`.

More plugins by Emtiaz Zahid

• Launchmender : 44 pre-launch checks with one-click fixes, a manual checklist and a client handoff report
• Faultwright : PHP errors, JavaScript errors, failed cron jobs, emails and updates on one timeline
• Stalemender : content audit that gives every post a Freshness Score (0–100) and tells you why
• Anchormender : internal link suggestions while you write, an orphan post report and bulk internal linking
• Repeatwright : RFM customer segments, repeat rate, LTV and cohort retention from your own WooCommerce orders
• Hoverbuy : sticky add to cart bar with image, price and quantity once the real button scrolls away, variable products included
• Dynafield : ACF, Pods, Meta Box and post meta as dynamic tags in free Elementor: text, link, image, number, colour and date
• Shipeach : shipping cost per product and per variation, by country, state or postcode, as its own method or added to other rates

External services

Waymender runs entirely on your own server. It uses no third-party link-checking service and sends nothing to the plugin author. It does make the following outbound requests.

1. The websites you link to

To find out whether a link works, Waymender requests it from your server the way a browser would: a HEAD request first, then a GET when the site does not answer HEAD properly. Waymender sends the URL being checked with three headers: a User-Agent that identifies the plugin and your site address, Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Waymender/<version>; +https://your-site/) , so that site owners can see who is checking and why; Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,*/*;q=0.8 ; and Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8 , so that sites answer as they would a browser. No cookies, referrer, visitor data or content from your site are sent.

Link checks are spaced out per domain: after one link on a domain is checked, the next link on that domain waits 2 seconds by default (configurable; at most 1 second for a few large sites that handle it easily: wikipedia.org, github.com, youtube.com, youtu.be, wordpress.org and google.com, subdomains included). Within a single check, the HEAD request, the GET fallback and any redirects it follows go out back to back. A 429 (Too Many Requests) or 503 (Service Unavailable) answer pauses checks of that domain for its Retry-After time (at most 7 days), or 1 hour when it sends none. Working links are cached for 7 days, and domains you list as excluded or anti-bot are never requested. Waymender does not read robots.txt. Checks happen in the background after you start a scan, in an hourly re-check of links that failed once or were rate limited, and, if you enable it in Settings, in a weekly automatic scan. Links pointing to your own site are resolved locally where possible and otherwise requested from your own server in the same way.

2. WordPress.org, once

If a link check fails with a DNS error, Waymender sends a single HEAD request to https://api.wordpress.org/core/version-check/1.7/ to find out whether your host blocks outbound connections altogether, so it can tell you instead of marking every link broken. It carries the same three headers as above. This happens once per site, and once more each time you tick the re-test option under Settings → Advanced (shown after outbound requests were found blocked). Privacy: https://wordpress.org/about/privacy/

3. Internet Archive, only when you ask

When you click “Use archived copy” on a broken link, Waymender asks the Wayback Machine availability API at https://archive.org/wayback/available for the closest snapshot of that URL. The broken URL is sent with a User-Agent naming the plugin; the archived URL and its date come back and are cached for 24 hours. If you then click “Use this copy”, the link in your content is rewritten to that web.archive.org address (with rel=”nofollow” by default, see Fix above) and the new address is checked like any other link: a HEAD request to web.archive.org, a GET when HEAD is not answered properly, and redirects followed up to five times. No page content is downloaded from the archive or inserted into your posts. Terms of use and privacy policy (the Internet Archive publishes both on one page): https://archive.org/about/terms

4. Email

If you enable the weekly report under Settings → Notifications (off by default), Waymender sends one email every Monday, around 08:00 in your site’s timezone, through your site’s normal wp_mail() to the addresses you enter, or to the site admin email. It contains counts plus the top broken links and 404 paths, and is skipped when there is nothing to report.

Privacy

The 404 log is on by default and records, for each page path visitors could not find: the path, a hit counter, first and last time seen, the domain name (not the full URL) of up to five referring sites, and a coarse browser family such as “chrome” or “bot”. It does not store IP addresses, full user-agent strings, cookies, or which logged-in user made the request. Query strings are dropped unless you turn on “Keep query strings”, in which case anything in the query string, including tokens or email addresses if your site puts them there, is stored as part of the path. Requests that look like bots are logged too, flagged as bots, and hidden on the 404 log screen until you tick “Include bots” (untick “Hide