Scheduled scans

Scheduled scans check your site for broken links without you clicking anything. By the end of this page you will have a schedule running and email reports on their way.

Plan: scheduled scans and email reports need a site with Pro. On a site without Pro, the schedule options show a PRO badge.

Set the schedule#

1. Open Settings & billing in the Broken Links menu.
2. On the General tab, find Scan schedule.
3. Pick Daily, Weekly or Monthly.
4. Set the Time and the Timezone for the scan.

Your changes save on their own a moment later. The line "Next automatic scan" then shows the date and time of the next run.

A monthly schedule runs every 30 days, not on a fixed date of the month.

Weekly is the default#

The plugin stores a weekly schedule at midnight when you install it. That schedule waits until the site gets Pro.

So once the site holds a Pro slot, weekly scans start by themselves. Your next visit to wp-admin sets the schedule, and the first scan runs at the next scheduled time. To stop them, set Scan schedule to Manual.

How a scheduled scan runs#

A scheduled scan checks the same content as a manual scan. It uses your settings for content types, link types and exclusions.

It runs through WP-Cron, the task runner built into WordPress. WP-Cron only fires when someone visits the site. On a quiet site, a scan can start later than the time you set.

Some hosts turn WP-Cron off, and those sites need a server cron job that calls WordPress on a schedule. Ask your host if you are unsure.

The Watch WP-Cron card on the plugin's Uptime Monitor page alerts you when WP-Cron stops. Uptime in wp-admin shows how to set it up.

Get the report by email#

1. Open the Notifications tab in the settings.
2. Switch on Email me when new broken links are found.
3. Under Send to, enter one or more addresses. Separate them with commas.

After each scheduled scan that finds broken links, the plugin mails a report. It lists every broken link with its status code, and it leaves warnings out.

The report comes from your own WordPress site, not from brokenlinkchecker.io. Its subject starts with "Broken Links Found on" and your site name.

Email the post authors#

Switch on Email the post author when their post has a broken link under Post authors. Each author then gets a mail about the broken links in their own posts.

An author who is already on the Send to list gets only the main report. Links in comments and sliders are left out of author mail.

When no mail arrives#

• Manual scans never send mail. Only scheduled scans do.
• No broken links means no mail. The plugin sends nothing when a scan finds no broken links.
• Your site's mail may not go out. The report uses the mail setup of your WordPress site. If other site mail fails too, fix that first, often with an SMTP plugin.

Uptime alerts, ranking reports and login codes come from brokenlinkchecker.io. They do not depend on your site's mail.