Link Checker vs Really Simple Security – Simple and Performant Security (formerly Really Simple SSL)

The Link Checker for WordPress uses an external service to crawl your website and find broken links and images on your website. In contrast to search engine tools like the Google Search Console, which only show if a URL on your website is not reachable, it does not matter for the Link Checker if the links leads to an internal or external URL. The Link Checker will find all dead links. The Link Checker works for every plugin out of the box. The computation costs for your website is also very low because the crawler does the heavy work and just acts like a normal visitor, who visits all pages of you website once. Limitations of the free version The Link Checker can be used for free, but the free version is limited. You can check websites with up to 500 URLs. Advanced features like image or video checks, CSV export, scheduler support, and form login support aren’t available in the free version. The service cannot be offered free of charge for larger websites because the crawling is done by servers operated by the plugin developer and renting and maintaining these servers isn’t cheap. Videos You can find videos about the Link Checker on the Link Checker for WordPress playlist on YouTube. Features Simple setup. Works out of the box with all WordPress plugins. Low computation costs for your webserver. Lists all broken links and redirects on your website. Support for Polylang (probably also WPML) sites. Technical Features Respects your robots.txt file (also the crawl-delay directive). You can use the user-agents MB-LinkChecker to control the crawler. Additional Features of Link Checker Pro Check if embedded internal and external images are broken. Check if embedded YouTube videos are broken. Scheduler to automatically check a website once a day and get a summary report by email. The result can be exported as CSV file. Form login support to check protected pages like membership areas. The result is saved on the Link Checker server so that it can be fetched multiple times without requiring a recheck. For example from different users or with different browsers. Upcoming Features Support for checking the availability of videos, CSS files and JS files. Technical Requirements Works with WordPress 4.7 or newer on PHP 5.6 or newer. Use of an External Server The Link Checker uses an external server, operated by the developer of the plugin, to crawl your website and detect broken links. This means, that there is some communication between your website and the server. The only data that is communicated to the external server by your website is the URL of your website and the fact that you are using WordPress. The server than crawlers your website (as a normal visitor does) and answers with a list of the found broken links.

Easily improve site security with WordPress Hardening, Two-Factor Authentication (2FA), Login Protection, Vulnerability Detection and SSL certificate. Really simple, Effective and Performant WordPress Security Really Simple Security is the most lightweight and easy-to-use security plugin for WordPress. It secures your WordPress website with SSL certificate generation, including proper 301 https redirection and SSL enforcement, scanning for possible vulnerabilities, Login Protection and implementing essential WordPress hardening features. We believe that security should have the absolute minimum effect on website performance, user experience and maintainability. Therefore, Really Simple Security is: Lightweight: Every security feature is developed with a modular approach and with performance in mind. Disabled features won’t load any redundant code. Easy-to-use: 1-minute configuration with short onboarding setup. Security Features Easy SSL Migration Migrates your website to HTTPS and enforces SSL in just one click. 301 redirect via PHP or .htaccess Secure cookies Let’s Encrypt: Install an SSL Certificate if your hosting provider supports manual installation. Server Health Check: Your server configuration is every bit as important for your website security. WordPress Hardening Tweak your configuration and keep WordPress fortified and safe by tackling potential weaknesses. Prevent code execution in the uploads folder Prevent login feedback and disable user enumeration Disable XML-RPC Disable directory browsing Username restrictions (block ‘admin’ and public names) and much more.. Vulnerability Detection Get notified when plugins, themes or WP core contain vulnerabilities and need appropriate action. Login Protection Allow or enforce Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) for specific user roles. Users receive a two-factor code via Email. Improve Security with Really Simple Security Pro Protect your site with all essential security features by upgrading to Really Simple Security Pro. Advanced SSL enforcement Mixed Content Scan & Fixer. Detect files that are requested over HTTP and fix them to HTTPS, both Front- and Back-end. Enable HTTP Strict Transport Security and configure your site for the HSTS Preload list. Firewall Really Simple Security Pro includes a performant and efficient WordPress firewall, to stop bots, crawlers and bad actors with IP and username blocks. 404 blocking – Blocks crawlers as they trigger unusual numbers of 404 errors. Region blocking – Only allow/block access to your site from specific regions. Automated and customisable Firewall rules. IP blocklist and allowlist. Security Headers Security headers protect your site visitors against the risk of clickjacking, cross-site-forgery attacks, stealing login credentials and malware. Independent of your Server Configuration, works on Apache, LiteSpeed, NGINX, etc. Protect your website visitors with X-XSS Protection, X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options, a Referrer Policy and CORS headers. Automatically generate your WordPress-tailored Content Security Policy. Vulnerability Measures When a vulnerability is detected in a plugin, theme or WordPress core you will get notified accordingly. With Vulnerability Measures, you can configure simple but effective measures to make sure that a critical vulnerability won’t remain unattended. Force update: An update process will be tried multiple times until it can be assumed development of a theme or plugin is abandoned. You will be notified during these steps. Quarantine: When a plugin or theme can’t be updated to solve a vulnerability, Really Simple Security can quarantine the plugin. Advanced Site Hardening Choose a custom login URL Automated File Permissions check and fixer Rename and randomize your database prefix Change the debug.log file location to a non-public folder Disable application passwords Control admin creation Disable HTTP methods, reducing HTTP requests Login Protection Secure your website’s login process and user accounts with powerful security measures. Two-Step verification (Email login) 2FA (two factor authentication) with TOTP Passwordless login with passkey login Enforce strong passwords and frequent password change Limit Login Attempts With Limit Login Attempts you can configure a threshold to temporarily or permanently block IP addresses or (non-existing) usernames. You can also throw a CAPTCHA after a failed login (hCaptcha or Google reCaptcha) Access Control Restrict access to your site for specific regions. Add specific IP addresses or IP ranges to the Blocklist or Allowlist. Useful Links Documentation Security Definitions Translate Really Simple Security Issues & pull requests Feature requests Love Really Simple Security? If you want to support the continuing development of this plugin, please consider buying Really Simple Security Pro, which includes some excellent security features and premium support. About Really Simple Plugins Our mission is to make complex WordPress requirements really easy. Really Simple Security is developed by Really Simple Plugins. For generating SSL certificates, Really Simple Security uses the le acme2 PHP Let’s Encrypt client library, thanks to ‘fbett’ for providing it. Vulnerability Detection uses WP Vulnerability, an open-source initiative by Javier Casares. Want to join as a collaborator? We’re on GitHub as well!