hongpong

Hi @tomusher, thank you for the positive feedback!

Re longer term intentions: I am not interested in creating a subscription “pro” version. It is not really my style and I don’t have the latitude to cover the kind of support level people might expect. I am interested in, for example, if this plugin could help purge the Interwebs of those horrible AMP URLS and Facebook ?fbclid query strings (replacing them both with good canonical links) https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker/issues/7

I would think that donations are reasonable (if you have advice about which donation gateways are best for wordpress plugins I would like to know! can email [email protected] since that is a bit offtopic ) and I agree this is a big enough plugin that it ought to be able to get at least a bit of donations coming in for a reasonably scaled effort.

I am also a big supporter of free software and would like a friendly community around this plugin that can really make it hum. I would also like to make it connect with all things related to indieweb.org which has a lot to do with cleanly published URLs and the health of the overall internet. (there are some indieweb wordpress plugins, maybe they can leverage this one and vice versa)

Generally I would intend to manage feature requests and improvements via Github here : https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker/issues and there is already an enhancement label going on several issues there. (A first pull request came in and was rolled last week there, we are off to the races). I also agree that some kind of fundraising system that could crowdfund new features would be a nice add on that could push this plugin even farther.

Re short term intentions, I spent the last few days rebuilding & reinstalling my local system to provide a better dev environment. Next I will take a shot at adding a few phpunit tests (this will also be posted on github and work with Travis CI I hope) then I will submit that to the WordPress plugins group and see if they find it acceptable for taking over managing this plugin.

Per what @ver3 mentions, I wonder if a mechanism for beta testers would be simply alternatively tagged releases on github (like 1.11.8beta3) or if there would need to be an email listserv.

Thank you all for the support on this!

Thank you for reporting this @forest-skills @leopard-lady. The create_function issue has been fixed in the fork here: https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker

You can download it here:
https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker/archive/master.zip

I have requested to manage this plugin here:
https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/request-to-transfer-ownership-of-broken-link-checker/

Best regards!

Hi @katepdx it should work to scan if outgoing connections are not blocked and curl is allowed to PHP. (if you are trying to scan into an IP restricted site, you would need the scanning site address to be whitelisted)

I have requested to take over this plugin since it has not been maintained for two years here: https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/request-to-transfer-ownership-of-broken-link-checker/

I am now tracking issues here and providing some community developed patches: https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker

You can try this patched version and see if it works for you:
https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker/archive/master.zip

hi @johnny538 I have logged your issue here
https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker/issues/33

looks to me like this

        if ( empty($post) || !in_array($post->post_type, $this->enabled_post_types)) {

Perhaps $post is not empty and $this is unset. That would lead to this condition I think. More careful checking of the nature of $this may be needed since this code could be triggered in an odd place?

Entering a debug statement above the line, or var_dump($post) and var_dump($this) might be needed to figure this out.

Also need to know WP and PHP versions in play here since the ’empty’ function did change its behavior during PHP5. https://php.net/manual/en/function.empty.php

Hi @grzegorzjanoszka . I have filed your issue here in case someone figures out a way to code it:
https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker/issues/32

Here is the current situation:

I have put together all the patches around on Github I could find via the network analysis, including PHP7 fixes and transaction fixes (a lot of this was gathered by other developers, see the last link on the post for info). The plugin has not been maintained by what is now a unit of GoDaddy since about Q3 2017.

The Head of the patched Broken Link Checker github repo can be downloaded here if you want to try it:
https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker/archive/master.zip
Repo URL:
https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker

Please take a look at the issues I wrote up which illustrates good ideas that can be applied to this plugin:
https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker/issues

Note this repo URL is subject to change – if i have to fork it i will change the URL. I already have a “cool name” in mind.

I have requested to take over managing this plugin:
https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/request-to-transfer-ownership-of-broken-link-checker/
If you support this, you can chime in there! Thanks for the vigilance ??

Hi @oym @techforaging @81-1 @tripledm, here is the current situation:

I have put together all the patches around on Github I could find via the network analysis, including PHP7 fixes and transaction fixes (a lot of this was gathered by other developers, see the last link on the post for info). The plugin has not been maintained by what is now a unit of GoDaddy since about Q3 2017.

The Head of the patched Broken Link Checker github repo can be downloaded here if you want to try it:
https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker/archive/master.zip
Repo URL:
https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker

Please take a look at the issues I wrote up which illustrates good ideas that can be applied to this plugin:
https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker/issues

Note this repo URL is subject to change – if i have to fork it i will change the URL. I already have a “cool name” in mind.

I have requested to take over managing this plugin:
https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/request-to-transfer-ownership-of-broken-link-checker/
If you support this, you can chime in there! Thanks for the vigilance ??

Good catch @syntax53 & @moody1337. Here is the current situation:

I have put together all the patches around on Github I could find via the network analysis, including PHP7 fixes and transaction fixes (a lot of this was gathered by other developers, see the last link on the post for info). The plugin has not been maintained by what is now a unit of GoDaddy since about Q3 2017.

The Head of the patched Broken Link Checker github repo can be downloaded here if you want to try it:
https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker/archive/master.zip
Repo URL:
https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker

Please take a look at the issues I wrote up which illustrates good ideas that can be applied to this plugin:
https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker/issues

Note this repo URL is subject to change – if i have to fork it i will change the URL. I already have a “cool name” in mind.

I have requested to take over managing this plugin:
https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/request-to-transfer-ownership-of-broken-link-checker/
If you support this, you can chime in there! Thanks for the vigilance ??

Good catch @vejapixel . Here is the current situation:

I have put together all the patches around on Github I could find via the network analysis, including PHP7 fixes and transaction fixes (a lot of this was gathered by other developers, see the last link on the post for info). The plugin has not been maintained by what is now a unit of GoDaddy since about Q3 2017.

The Head of the patched Broken Link Checker github repo can be downloaded here if you want to try it:
https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker/archive/master.zip
Repo URL:
https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker

Please take a look at the issues I wrote up which illustrates good ideas that can be applied to this plugin:
https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker/issues

Note this repo URL is subject to change – if i have to fork it i will change the URL. I already have a “cool name” in mind.

I have requested to take over managing this plugin:
https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/request-to-transfer-ownership-of-broken-link-checker/
If you support this, you can chime in there! Thanks for the vigilance ??

• This reply was modified 6 years ago by hongpong.

Nice. I have sketched out the idea for this enhancement here, in case any clever programmers want to take it on

https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker/issues/31

Ah you are correct!! I hadn’t heard of this before but you are 100% right. I will have to remember this! ??

• https://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/c/CURLOPT_NOBODY.html
• https://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec9.html
• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Methods/HEAD

it would seem that there could be a way to make a particular link do a standard request instead of a Head request. Like, that could be available as a checkbox or button on the report for that link.

Hi,
I have opened a request to transfer ownership here:
https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/request-to-transfer-ownership-of-broken-link-checker/

I consolidated a bunch of community patches here:
https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker

You can download an updated version of the plugin here with these patches rolled in. It doesn’t change the database record structure, but seems to be more stable and robust than the current version by all feedback so far:

https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker/archive/master.zip

Nice to see you have found success, and even led us to new plugin bugs ??

To clarify yes this plugin makes GET requests. ‘head’ in this context I think you mean header attributes, as head is not an HTTP operation.
BLC provides some Header attributes (in particular the browser client string, which is now changed a bit on the fork version from this version)

302 is supposed to be a temporary redirect not a permanent one. Unless I am really confused the code in the plugin is not right for this (it says “found” via /includes/links.php line 73). in your results it says “HTTP/1.1 302 Found” which is misleading. I have filed this here:

https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker/issues/28

A little background the ‘checker’ mechanism that actually calls out to remote sites uses either snoopy, (which appears abandoned? https://sourceforge.net/projects/snoopy/ ) or curl, which is the standard unix fetcher tool although not all web hosts permit its use. See /modules/checkers/http.php for info.

This would be better served if “guzzle” were available instead. see https://docs.guzzlephp.org/en/stable/ I filed this here
https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker/issues/24

EDIT: just five minutes after I posted the issue @mdandidarmawan has submitted the correct pull request and it is now merged on the fork. latest version now here: https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker/archive/master.zip

• This reply was modified 6 years ago by hongpong.
• This reply was modified 6 years ago by hongpong.
• This reply was modified 6 years ago by hongpong.

it is possible that /wp throws it off. If you can’t get a debug log to run you could try hard coding a path around here circa core/core.php around line 560.

			//Logging. The plugin can log various events and results for debugging purposes.
			$this->conf->options['logging_enabled'] = !empty($_POST['logging_enabled']);
			$this->conf->options['custom_log_file_enabled'] = !empty($_POST['custom_log_file_enabled']);

			if ( $this->conf->options['logging_enabled'] ) {
				if ( $this->conf->options['custom_log_file_enabled'] ) {
					$log_file = strval($cleanPost['log_file']);
				} else {
					//Default log file is /wp-content/uploads/broken-link-checker/blc-log.txt
					$log_directory = self::get_default_log_directory();
					$log_file = $log_directory . '/' . self::get_default_log_basename();

					//Attempt to create the log directory.
					if ( !is_dir($log_directory) ) {
						if ( mkdir($log_directory, 0750) ) {
							//Add a .htaccess to hide the log file from site visitors.
							file_put_contents($log_directory . '/.htaccess', 'Deny from all');
						}
					}
				}

Thanks @gooma2 I have filed your issue here:
https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker/issues/27

@rominet You are welcome to try the patched plugin version here and see if it improves stability. It seems the pattern is not that the main plugin is totally broken but it is more likely to suffer timeouts and ‘get stuck’ . the alternative community version, currently:

https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker/archive/master.zip

Hi all,

I did hear back from ManageWP reasonably quickly, and they recognize the situation and are deciding what to do about it. I’m alright with waiting a bit to see what they say next. They might jump back in, but have not decided yet, as I understand it. @ipstenu if I don’t hear anything from them for another week to ten days, I will proceed on that documented process and submit a patched plugin for the process; thank you for checking in!

@tomusher thrilled to hear the jobs are running correctly for you.

I would think that these commits by JanneAalto improve working thru the transactions:
https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker/commit/ce9d09dbd300c314b03809f79a81c425f4ac999b
https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker/commit/c71c62ed2f4a4e8d96bb08d6c2a3e81068f1711f
also probably @achmafooma fixing the infinite loopback issue with CURL
https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker/commit/fb117066dbd04bf3ff78f4179a4a604aad85ca6d
https://github.com/HongPong/broken-link-checker/commit/069c4326f48e3c73e5cdeadc01f384a150e85026

I think all of these have improved stability a lot.