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Automatically crawl your WordPress site's frontend, detect broken links (404s, 410s, broken/looping redirects, and 5xx server errors), log exactly where each broken link lives on the page, and get notified by email — all from one clean admin screen.

• Plugin Slug: kw-performance
• Author: KW Developers (kilowott.com)
• Requires: WordPress 5.8+, PHP 8.0+
• Download: Latest release (zip)

Features

• Crawls published pages, posts, custom post types, and post type archives.
• Extracts every <a href> on the rendered page (ignoring mailto:, tel:, javascript:, #anchor, and empty links).
• Validates each unique URL once per scan (deduplicated) using the WordPress HTTP API, manually following redirects to report the full chain (301/302/307/308), the final URL, and the final HTTP status.
• Flags 404, 410, 5xx responses, connection errors/timeouts, and redirect loops as broken.
• Detects the DOM context of every broken link: nearest ancestor CSS class/ID, all ancestor classes, and Gutenberg (wp-block-*) / Elementor (elementor-widget-*) markers when present.
• Stores results in a dedicated database table ({prefix}kwperf_logs) with detection counts, first/last seen timestamps, and auto-removes rows for links that are no longer broken on the next scan.
• Scheduled scanning via WP-Cron (hourly / twice daily / daily / weekly), with a manual "Run Scan Now" AJAX button and a progress indicator.
• HTML email report sent to one or more configurable admin addresses (comma-separated) after each scheduled scan when broken links are found (optionally even when none are found).
• Optional Slack notifications via an Incoming Webhook — same trigger as email, with a "Send Test Notification" button that checks the webhook before you save.
• Searchable, sortable, paginated 404 Log admin screen built on WP_List_Table, with filtering by status type, CSV export, single/bulk delete, and single/bulk/"recheck all" re-validation.
• Scan History screen showing duration, pages/links scanned, broken/working counts, and any errors for every past run (manual or scheduled).
• Nonce-protected AJAX endpoints, manage_options capability checks, sanitized input, escaped output, and prepared SQL throughout.

Installation

1. Download the latest release zip and either upload it via Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, or extract it into wp-content/plugins/.
2. Activate KW Performance from the Plugins screen.
3. Go to KW Performance → Settings to configure the scan interval, notification email, and which post types are scanned.

Activation automatically creates the plugin's database tables and schedules the recurring scan; deactivation removes the scheduled cron event without touching your logged data.

Upgrading From KW 404 Detector

This plugin was previously named "KW 404 Detector". If you have that version installed:

1. Deactivate KW 404 Detector, then remove its files directly (FTP/file manager/SSH) — don't click "Delete" on the Plugins screen, since that runs its uninstall routine and wipes its settings.
2. Install and activate KW Performance as above.

On activation, it automatically migrates the old plugin's logs, scan history, and settings into its own tables/options, drops the old tables, and cleans up the old cron event — no data is lost, and no manual DB work is needed. If you do end up deleting the old plugin through wp-admin first, the migration simply has nothing left to find; you'll just start fresh.

Usage

Settings

KW Performance → Settings lets you:

• Enable/disable scheduled scanning and choose the interval.
• Set the notification email address(es) — comma-separate multiple addresses (defaults to the site admin email).
• Choose whether to be notified even when a scan finds nothing broken (applies to both email and Slack).
• Choose which public post types are crawled.
• Enable Slack notifications and paste an Incoming Webhook URL, then confirm it works with "Send Test Notification" before saving.
• Run an on-demand scan ("Run Scan Now") with a live progress bar — a second scan cannot be started while one is already running.
• Export all logged broken links as CSV, or clear the log table entirely.
• View last scan date/time, pages scanned, total broken links, and total working links from the last run.

404 Log

KW Performance → 404 Log lists every currently-broken link with:

Use the search box and status filter (404 / 410 / 5xx / broken redirects) to narrow the list, click column headers to sort, and use the bulk action dropdown to delete or recheck multiple rows at once. "Recheck All" re-validates every logged link immediately and removes any that are now resolved.

Scan History

KW Performance → Scan History shows every completed scan (manual or scheduled) with its date, duration, pages/links scanned, broken/working counts, and any fetch errors encountered.

Database Schema

{$wpdb->prefix}kwperf_logs
  id, source_page_id, source_permalink, source_title,
  broken_url, final_url, http_status, redirect_status, redirect_count,
  section, css_class, link_text, status,
  first_detected, last_checked, detection_count

{$wpdb->prefix}kwperf_scan_history
  id, scan_date, duration, pages_scanned, links_scanned,
  broken_links_found, working_links, errors_encountered, scan_type

Uninstalling

Deactivating the plugin only removes the scheduled cron event — your logs and settings are preserved. To permanently delete all plugin data (logs, scan history, settings, and database tables) when the plugin is deleted, enable Delete Data On Uninstall on the Settings screen first, then delete the plugin from the Plugins screen.

Performance Notes

• Every unique URL is checked at most once per scan run, even if it appears on many pages.
• Redirects are followed manually (HEAD first, falling back to GET) up to the configured maximum, so redirect chains and loops are detected without extra requests.
• Large sites: scans run with no PHP execution time limit where the host allows it, but very large catalogs may still benefit from a longer host-level timeout or a less frequent cron interval.

Testing With test-404-template.php

The plugin ships two extra files for exercising every scanner case at once on a real site, without waiting to stumble across real broken links:

• test-404-template.php — a WordPress Page Template. It renders one page containing every link type the scanner has to handle: ignored links (#, empty, mailto:, tel:, javascript:, and a bare email typo missing mailto:), a working link, a direct 404, direct 410/500/503, single- and double-hop redirects to both a working and a broken destination, a redirect loop, a working and a broken external link, a duplicate broken link across two sections, and a link with no visible text — each wrapped in markup meant to exercise section/class detection (a <section class="hero-banner">, a wp-block-* Gutenberg-style wrapper, an elementor-widget-*/elementor-element wrapper, an ancestor with multiple classes, and an ancestor identified only by id). The page itself renders a table of every case and its expected result, so you can eyeball it before even running a scan.
• test-404-mu-plugin.php — a required companion "must-use" plugin. KW Performance checks most links with an HTTP HEAD request, but WordPress only runs a page template's own PHP for a full GET page load — a HEAD request to an existing page short-circuits before the template file is ever included. Simulating status codes and redirects directly in the template would therefore work if you open the links in a browser (GET) but silently no-op against the scanner's HEAD checks. Hooking template_redirect from a must-use plugin fixes that, since must-use plugins load unconditionally on every request, HEAD included.

Setup

1. Copy test-404-template.php into the root of your active theme (or child theme).
2. Copy test-404-mu-plugin.php into wp-content/mu-plugins/ (create that folder if it doesn't exist — no activation needed, WordPress loads everything in it automatically).
3. In wp-admin, create a new Page, choose KW Performance Test Template under Page Attributes, and publish it.
4. Run a scan (Run Scan Now, or wait for the cron) and compare the 404 Log against the expected-result table on the test page itself.

Notes

• If your host uses full-page or CDN caching (Kinsta, Servebolt, Cloudflare, etc.), purge the cache before scanning — a cached 200 for one of the simulated status/redirect URLs will read as a false negative that has nothing to do with the plugin.
• The ?kwperf_status=... query-string variants are all technically the same page/permalink, so they show up as separate rows in the 404 Log (one per simulated case) with the same source page — that's expected, not a duplicate-detection bug.
• Both files are meant to be temporary. Once you're done, delete the test page, remove the template from your theme, and remove the mu-plugin file — it deliberately serves broken responses.

File Structure

kw-performance/
├── kw-performance.php      Plugin bootstrap, autoloader, activation hooks
├── uninstall.php           Uninstall cleanup
├── test-404-template.php   Theme page template — one-page test of every scanner case
├── test-404-mu-plugin.php  Companion mu-plugin — makes the test page's simulated cases work under HEAD checks
├── assets/
│   ├── css/admin.css
│   ├── js/admin.js
│   └── images/icon.svg, logo-horizontal.svg
├── includes/
│   ├── class-plugin.php       Core singleton / lifecycle
│   ├── class-admin.php        Admin menus, screens, asset enqueue
│   ├── class-scanner.php      Crawler, link extraction, URL validation
│   ├── class-cron.php         WP-Cron scheduling
│   ├── class-logger.php       Log/scan-history persistence (custom tables)
│   ├── class-database.php     Table creation/teardown
│   ├── class-settings.php     Settings API registration
│   ├── class-email.php        HTML notification email
│   ├── class-slack.php        Slack Incoming Webhook notification
│   ├── class-ajax.php         AJAX + admin-post (CSV export) handlers
│   ├── class-logs-list-table.php
│   └── class-history-list-table.php
└── templates/
    ├── settings-page.php
    ├── logs-page.php
    ├── scan-history-page.php
    └── email-scan-report.php

Security

• All state-changing AJAX requests are protected by a nonce (kwperf_admin_nonce) and require the manage_options capability.
• CSV export uses check_admin_referer() on an admin-post.php action.
• All database access uses $wpdb->prepare() / $wpdb->insert() / $wpdb->update() with typed placeholders.
• All output is escaped with the appropriate esc_html(), esc_url(), or esc_attr() calls.

License

GPL v2 or later.