WPMU DEV’s award-winning image optimization plugin’s new Ultra Smush unlocks unprecedented image compression levels up to 5x greater than Super Smush, while retaining impressive image quality!
Is your WordPress site filled with images? Do you want those images to load on your pages faster than a lamborghini speeding on the Autobahn and compress them tighter than a full stack developer’s schedule? And do all this with almost no discernible loss of image quality?
Before we get into how to activate and use the new Ultra Smush image compression level and why it can deliver even more impressive results than our already impressive Super Smush feature, let’s share some of the results of using Ultra Smush.
First, here are the results of performing a bulk smush on a test site with 1,000+ large-ish images with only Super Smush activated (CDN, Local WebP, and Lazy Load are inactive)…
Before Ultra Smush: Image compression savings using Super Smush only.
After activating Ultra Smush, we then ran the test again to see if we could squeeze anything more out of an already image-optimized site.
And it did! Ultra Smush squeezed out more than 5x times savings…
After Ultra Smush: More than 5x times savings on an already optimized site!
Early testers reported getting similar results.
Results: Super Smush (Before) vs Ultra Smush (After)
And here are just some of the comments we received from early testers about Ultra Smush’s impact on image quality:
“Ultra is awesome. It was hard to find the difference between qualities. Quality loss is negligible. I am impressed!”
“It looks pretty good, only if I look really close I can see that some of the colors are not as vibrant, and that some edges are not as sharp as on the original.”
“On a medium size image with lots of details, you gotta look very close to see slight color saturation differences. On a big image with a solid but gradient background, transitions between gradients are more visible and the main object seems lees sharp. You really need to look very close and expect it. Though it’s not for a photo site that requires superb quality. All in all: pretty impressive.”
Our plugin development team also did extensive testing, comparing Ultra Smush’s results with Ewww image optimizer and TinyPNG by running DSSIM tests (a quality comparison metric that shows variation from the original image – the lower the score, the better).
Ultra Smush outperformed the competition in most tests and came out the overall winner for both compression savings…
File Size Reduction testing shows that Ultra Smush is the clear winner!
DSSIM testing shows Ultra Smush delivers superior image savings and better quality over the competition.
To be clear, using Ultra Smush will result in Lossy compression, so while you should not expect the original quality, the results will still be ultra-impressive.
How To Enable Smush’s Ultra Mode
Ultra Smush is not just a new feature, it’s an entirely new compression level for Bulk Smushing images.
Ultra mode is a feature of Smush Pro that replaces the Super Smush toggle on the free version of the plugin with additional “Smush Mode” options.
Switching to Ultra mode is ultra easy. If you have Smush Pro installed on your site, simply navigate to the Bulk Smush Settings screen and select Ultra (Higher Compression)by clicking on the button, then save your settings.
Choose the level of compression for bulk smushing images that best suits your needs.
Smush Mode offers three compression levels for Bulk Smush settings:
Basic – Choose this option for minimal file size reduction (low savings), pixel-perfect lossless compression of original image quality, and negligible impact on speed.
Super – For faster page loads, select this setting for substantial file size reduction with excellent image clarity. Super Smush provides up to 2x compression savings for your images (lossy compression).
Ultra – Select this compression option for professional-grade performance compression. Ultra Smush provides compression levels up to 5x greater than Super, while preserving impressive image quality.
After enabling Ultra Smush in your plugin settings, you can monitor results from The Hub’s Performance tab.
View Ultra Smush optimization results inside The Hub.
Notes:
If you would rather continue optimizing images using the Basic (lossless) or Super Smush settings, just select those Compression Level options instead.
If you enable Ultra Smush on a site where Smush is already running, remember to re-check all images and perform a new Bulk Smush to benefit from further optimization savings.
After enabling Ultra Smush, rerun Bulk Smush to optimize your site even further.
How Does Ultra Smush Compare To Super Smush?
While Super Smush provides up to 2x faster image optimization with virtually no visible loss in quality, Ultra Smush’s new compression engine offers up to 5 times file size reduction to achieve exceptional compression results.
Note: Currently, Ultra Smush improves JPEG images only. Features to improve PNG images will be added in future versions of the plugin.
If you are just getting started with WordPress optimization, then it’s important to know that using image compression on websites offers several significant benefits that enhance overall user experience and site performance, such as:
Faster Loading Speeds
Compressed images are smaller in size, which means they take less time to load when someone visits your WordPress website. Faster loading speeds improve user satisfaction and reduce bounce rates. Additionally, page loading speed is a crucial factor for SEO, as search engines tend to prioritize faster-loading websites in their search results.
Improved User Experience
When images load quickly, users are more likely to stay engaged with your content. High-quality, compressed images ensure that visitors can access the visual elements of your website without waiting for prolonged load times. This positive experience can lead to increased user retention and higher conversion rates.
Bandwidth Savings
Compressed images consume less bandwidth, making your website more efficient, especially for users with limited data plans or slower internet connections. This can be particularly important for mobile users, as they often have restricted data allowances.
Reduced Server Load
Smaller image sizes translate to reduced server load, as the server needs to process and transmit less data for each image request. This can help prevent performance issues during peak traffic times and reduce hosting costs.
Higher SEO Rankings
Google and other search engines consider page loading speed as one of the ranking factors. Faster loading times, achieved through image compression, can positively impact your website’s SEO and potentially lead to higher search engine rankings.
Ease of Backup and Restoration
Smaller image files are quicker to backup and restore, making it easier to manage your website’s backups efficiently.
Accessibility Considerations
Faster loading times benefit all users, including those with disabilities who may rely on screen readers or have limited bandwidth access.
The easiest way to implement image compression on WordPress websites is to use a plugin like Smush, which can be easily installed and configured to handle image compression and optimization automatically as you upload media to your WordPress site (both internally to the Media Library and external media directories) without compromising visual quality.
Choose Ultra Smush For Superior Image Optimization
As mentioned earlier, Ultra Smush is a Smush Pro feature. If you’re currently using the free Smush plugin, consider becoming a WPMU DEV member and start enjoying the benefit of extra savings and performance improvements, plus access to the most robust “all-in-one” WordPress management platform available anywhere.
So, if your aim is to significantly reduce image file sizes and automate the entire process, the solution is ultra simple…enable Ultra Smush on all your WordPress sites and experience an optimization boost of up to 5x in image compression savings and impressive image quality.
WordPress runs on PHP, so as a WordPress developer, it’s important to understand the PHP functions enabled on the server that hosts your site(s).
Do you need to set up a plugin or configure an application on a WordPress site and are wondering if a certain PHP function or library is enabled on your server (e.g. cURL)?
In this tutorial, we’ll show you a quick and easy way to find enabled PHP functions on your server using the phpinfo() function in WordPress. We also provide a comprehensive glossary of these PHP functions for reference, and to help you better understand the backend of your WordPress sites.
The phpinfo() function is a built-in PHP function that provides a long list of detailed information about the PHP installation and configuration settings on your server, including all the loaded extensions.
When phpinfo() is called and executed, it generates a comprehensive HTML page that displays various aspects of the PHP environment, including PHP version, extensions, directives, environment variables, and more.
The phpinfo() function outputs information in a tabular format, making it easy to navigate and understand the PHP configuration. This knowledge allows you to leverage the available functions on your hosting environment and optimize your WordPress development process.
The information displayed by phpinfo() can be categorized into different sections that provide specific details about a particular aspect of the PHP environment.
Some common information you can find using phpinfo() includes:
1. PHP version: The version of PHP running on the server.
2. Configuration settings: Various settings and directives defined in the PHP configuration file (php.ini).
3. Extensions: A list of loaded PHP extensions and their configurations.
4. Environment variables: Server environment variables and their values.
5. PHP variables: Information about predefined PHP variables, such as `$_SERVER`, `$_GET`, `$_POST`, etc.
6. HTTP headers: HTTP request and response headers.
For a list of all PHP functions enabled on your server, see the tutorial below.
Notes:
Use phpinfo() with caution. While it provides valuable information for development and troubleshooting purposes, it should not be left accessible on a production server. After obtaining the necessary information, we recommend removing or commenting out the phpinfo() function call for security purposes.
If you only need to know which version of PHP your server is currently running, you can skip the tutorial below and simply go to the Hosting > Overview tab in The Hub.
Check which version of PHP your server is running from The Hub
How to Find Enabled PHP Functions On Your Server Using phpinfo()
By following the steps outlined in this tutorial, you will learn how to easily retrieve a list of information showing all the enabled PHP functions and extensions on your server.
For this tutorial, we’ll show you how to access the list of PHP functions for a WordPress site set up on WPMU DEV hosting. Note that different hosting environments may use different tools and methods to display this information. Reach out to your hosting support if you have any questions or need help.
Step 1: Access your WordPress site’s files
To begin, you need to be able to access the WordPress site’s files stored on your server. You can do this either via FTP or using our File Manager tool.
Step 2: Create a PHP file
Next, create a PHP file using a text editor and add the phpinfo() function shown below:
<?php
phpinfo();
You can name this PHP file anything you like. In the example below, we’ve named the file ‘info.php’ (note: avoid using an existing filename found on the root folder of your WordPress installation to prevent overwriting the original file).
Create a PHP file to call the phpinfo() function.
Save your PHP file and close your text editor.
Step 3: Upload the file to your server
Locate the root directory of your WordPress installation, where the main files like wp-config.php and index.php are located, and upload your file to this folder.
As mentioned earlier, you can do this easily using our File Manager tool.
Upload the file to the WordPress install root directory.
Step 4:Â Access the phpinfo() output
Open your WordPress site in a web browser and enter the URL of the uploaded PHP file to generate a PHP function report.
You should see the PHP information displayed. The output will contain detailed information about the PHP configuration, including all enabled functions on your server.
PHP function report.
Step 5: Locate the enabled PHP functions
Scroll down the phpinfo() output to find a specific function. Typically, you will find a list of all enabled PHP functions along with their respective settings and configurations in the section labeled “Core.”
That’s all there is to it!
Refer to the Glossary section below if you need to look up any of the functions listed in your generated PHP function report .
Glossary of PHP Functions
This glossary provides a list of various PHP functions and their applications. Feel free to bookmark this page and use it as a quick reference guide to better understand the backend of your WordPress sites.
Configuration
This function deals with setting up PHP to work with the Internet server and to define settings within your PHP scripts.
bcmath – This module enables arbitrary precision mathematics in PHP.
calendar – This function of PHP allows conversions between various calendar formats.
cgi-fcgi – Command for PHP when run in CGI or FastCGI mode.
Core
These are basic PHP functions and classes that form the core of the PHP language.
ctype – A library of PHP that checks if the data type of a variable is a valid character type.
curl – Used for transferring data with URLs and is the backbone of multiple functions in PHP.
date – A group of functions that let you retrieve or format the local or GMT date and time in PHP.
dom – A PHP extension that provides a robust, powerful DOM (Document Object Model) XML API.
exif – PHP function used to work with image metadata.
FFI – Foreign Function Interface is an extension that provides a simple way to call native functions, access native variables, and create/access data structures defined in C libraries.
fileinfo – A PHP extension that helps you to identify a file’s mime type.
filter – This function filters data by either validating or sanitizing it which aids in securing a PHP application.
ftp – FTP PHP functions help establish a connection to a remote FTP server, a crucial part of file sharing.
gd – A library used for dynamic image creation.
gettext – An extension aimed at the internationalization of PHP scripts by providing translation support.
gmp – This is a PHP extension for arbitrary precision mathematics.
hash – This function is used to generate a hash value from a string.
iconv – Provides an interface to the GNU iconv library, which provides conversion of character sets.
igbinary – An alternative to PHP serializer with better performance and smaller size.
imagick – A PHP extension that allows working with ImageMagick, a robust software suite to create, edit, and compose images.
imap – This function provides an API for talking to the internet mail servers using PHP.
intl – This extension helps to perform UCA-conformant collation and date/time/number/currency formatting in PHP.
json – JSON functions in PHP allows for encoding and decoding JSON data.
ldap – LDAP functions connect, bind and disconnect from an LDAP directory.
libxml – A foundation library that offers a set of APIs for manipulating XML, including parsing XML documents and support for other document types like HTML.
mbstring – A non-binary string handling extension that provides multibyte specific string functions.
mcrypt – Provides a variety of encryption functions.
memcache – Memcache module provides handy procedural and object-oriented interface to memcached, high-performance, distributed memory object caching system, generic in nature but intended for use in speeding up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load.
memcached – An extension for interfacing with memcached via libmemcached library.
msgpack – Provides an interface to msgpack.org, which is a binary-based efficient object serialization library.
mysqli – A database driver used to interact with MySQL databases.
mysqlnd – It’s the MySQL native driver for PHP.
openssl – A robust PHP function used for generating and verifying digital signatures.
pcre – Provides functions for ‘perl-compatible regular expressions’.
PDO – PHP Data Objects is a database access layer providing a uniform method of access to multiple databases.
pdo_mysql – A driver that implements the PHP Data Object (PDO) interface to enable access to MySQL databases.
Phar – An archive format combined with a runtime library to help build and load PHP applications bundled into a single file.
posix – Accessors to the POSIX (Unix) system calls.
readline – Provides an interactive line editing capabilities and history functions.
redis – A PHP extension for interfacing with Redis, a high performance key-value storage service.
Reflection – A PHP extension, allows inspection and reverse-engineering of PHP programs using a process called “reflection”.
session – This function enables user session management.
shmop – A simple interface for accessing shared memory segments in PHP.
SimpleXML – An extension that simplifies the work of reading XML files.
soap – SoapClient is a PHP built-in class providing methods for sending SOAP requests and receiving SOAP responses from a URL.
sockets – PHP socket functions let you create and manage network sockets, low-level network communications between servers.
sodium – Sodium is a modern, easy-to-use software library for encryption, decryption, signatures, password hashing and more.
SPL – The Standard PHP Library (SPL) is a collection of interfaces and classes that are part of PHP core.
standard – These are built-in functions and classes provided by PHP which do not rely on external dependencies or PHP extensions.
sysvmsg – It provides an interface to System V message queues.
sysvsem – Offers access to POSIX-style semaphores.
sysvshm – Provides shared memory functions.
tokenizer – The tokenizer functions provide an API that allows converting PHP source code into an array of tokens.
xml – XML (eXtensible Markup Language) Parser functions let you parse XML documents.
xmlreader – An extension that pulls data in and pushes it back out again.
xmlrpc – PHP implementation of XML-RPC protocol used in exchanging data across a network.
xmlwriter – An extension to create XML documents using a simple ‘constructor-like’ style.
xsl – XSL is a language for expressing style sheets to transform XML documents into other XML documents.
Zend OPcache – An open-source component that improves PHP performance by storing pre-compiled script bytecode in shared memory, thereby removing the need for PHP to load and parse scripts on each request.
zip – PHP zip extension is used to read, write, and manipulate zip archives.
zlib – Provides access to zlib compression library.
Additional Modules
These are the underlying software components or libraries that add various functionalities to the PHP scripting language.
Environment
Involved in setting up, configuring, and managing the PHP runtime environment.
PHP Variables
These are used to store data which can be modified during the execution of your script.
DIY or Use Our Support Team
Learning PHP will enhance your ability to troubleshoot, modify and optimize your WordPress site.
Hopefully, this tutorial will come in handy if you need to do a quick look up of your server’s enabled PHP functions. Of course, if your WordPress sites are hosted with WPMU DEV, you can always reach out to our 24/7 support team for expert assistance on anything WordPress and hosting related, or get instant answers with our AI-powered assistant.
And rest assured, our hosting is configured to work with just about all WordPress plugins, applications, and configurations.
Adding text-to-speech (TTS) to your WordPress website can make your site more accessible to people with disabilities and enhance the experience of users that prefer listening to content over reading. Here are some of the best TTS plugins you can use to convert text into audio.
Accessibility and user experience play a crucial role in the success of your website. Text-to-speech brings a whole new dimension to content consumption and provide a convenient and engaging experience for your visitors by converting written text into natural-sounding speech.
In this post, we provide a basic guide for beginners on text-to-speech (TTS), and take a look at some of the best WordPress text-to-speech plugins, including both free and premium options. We’ll also discuss some of the factors you should consider when choosing a TTS plugin for your website.
Text-to-Speech (TTS) is a technology that converts written text into spoken words. It is a valuable tool that allows computers and digital devices to communicate information audibly, enabling users to listen to written content instead of reading it.
TTS systems employ various algorithms and linguistic techniques to analyze and transform text into synthesized speech. This technology has gained popularity due to its ability to make digital content more accessible, inclusive, and convenient for a wide range of users.
How Does Text-to-Speech Work?
Text-to-Speech technology utilizes a combination of text analysis, linguistic processing, and voice synthesis to convert written text into audible speech. The process typically involves the following steps:
 Text Analysis: The TTS system analyzes the input text, breaking it down into smaller linguistic units, such as words, phrases, and sentences. This step involves identifying punctuation, capitalization, and special symbols to understand the structure and meaning of the text.
Linguistic Processing: The system then applies linguistic rules and algorithms to interpret the text’s syntax, grammar, and context. This includes handling word pronunciation, sentence intonation, and language-specific rules. TTS systems often employ language models and phonetic databases to ensure accurate and natural-sounding speech.
Voice Synthesis: Once the text is analyzed and processed, the TTS system generates speech by transforming the processed text into audio signals. The system uses pre-recorded human speech segments or synthetic voices to create the spoken output. The synthesized speech is then played back through speakers or headphones, allowing users to listen to the converted text.
It’s important to note that with the recent explosion and proliferation of new AI technologies, TTS voice generation has undergone a remarkable transformation, progressing rapidly from its earlier robotic and expressionless state to becoming ultra-realistic and remarkably human-like. This evolution has been driven by several advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques.
By leveraging deep neural networks and sophisticated algorithms, researchers have been able to enhance the quality, naturalness, and expressiveness of synthesized voices.
One crucial factor behind this progress is the availability of vast amounts of high-quality speech data for training purposes. With the advent of large-scale voice datasets, TTS models can now learn from diverse and extensive samples of human speech, capturing the nuances of pronunciation, intonation, and pacing.
This abundance of data enables the models to grasp the intricacies of human vocal expression, resulting in more lifelike and engaging synthesized voices.
Furthermore, researchers have focused on refining the underlying architecture of TTS systems. Waveform synthesis methods, such as WaveNet and Tacotron, have significantly contributed to the improved realism of generated voices. These models employ complex neural networks to directly generate raw audio waveforms, capturing the subtleties of human speech at a granular level.
By modeling speech patterns and acoustic features with higher fidelity, these systems can produce more natural and human-like voices.
Voice cloning technologies have also played a prominent role in advancing TTS realism. Through voice cloning, it is now possible to create a synthesized voice that closely resembles a specific individual, including celebrities or historical figures. This process involves training the TTS models with a significant amount of voice recordings from the target speaker.
By capturing the unique timbre, cadence, and vocal characteristics of the person, voice cloning allows for the creation of personalized and highly authentic synthetic voices.
Here are several compelling reasons for using Text-to-Speech technology on your website:
Accessibility
TTS enhances accessibility and inclusivity and promotes equal access to digital content to a wider audience. It does this by providing an alternative means for users with visual impairments such as blindness or low vision to consume your content and engage with your information just as easily as those without such disabilities.
TTS plugins also benefit users with diverse abilities. For instance, individuals with reading difficulties, or learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, can rely on TTS to overcome reading challenges. TTS technology can read the text aloud, helping users to comprehend the content more easily and improve their overall browsing experience.
User Experience Enhancement
One of the main benefits of using TTS in WordPress is the improvement of the user experience. TTS makes content more engaging, immersive, and interactive, providing an audio option for consuming content, and catering to different users’ learning styles and preferences.
Some users may prefer listening to the text rather than reading, especially when multitasking or on the go. Adding an audio element to your content through TTS can create a more immersive experience for users, leading to better retention and comprehension and improve SEO metrics such as page on time.
So, if your site offers educational articles or blog posts, a TTS plugin allows visitors to listen to the content instead of reading it and engage with the material in a more interactive, immersive, and dynamic way, which can lead to increased engagement and greater user satisfaction.
Additionally, you can expand your audience by enabling users to listen to your articles as podcasts and submit these to various podcasting platforms like iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts.
Language Learning and Pronunciation
TTS systems can assist language learners in enhancing their pronunciation skills and understanding of spoken language and be valuable tools for individuals facing language barriers. By listening to the synthesized speech, learners can compare their own pronunciation and practice correct intonation and accents, leading to more accurate and natural-sounding spoken communication.
Converting text into spoken words in the user’s native or preferred language, breaks down communication barriers and fosters inclusivity. By providing a means to listen to content in their native language, individuals with different linguistic backgrounds can access and comprehend your written information more effectively.
Various WordPress TTS plugins offer multilingual support, enabling you to reach a global audience effectively.
Multitasking and Convenience
TTS enables users to listen to content while engaged in other tasks or situations where reading may not be feasible. People can consume your information while driving, exercising, or performing other activities (e.g. while cooking dinner), making it a convenient ‘hands-free’ option for busy individuals who want to stay productive and informed.
The flexibility and customization options provided by TTS plugins further enhance user experience by offering a range of customization features, including the ability to choose from different voices, accents, and reading styles. You can select the most suitable voice that aligns with your brand’s tone and style and website design, creating a consistent and personalized experience for your users.
Productivity and Efficiency
TTS enables users to listen, process, and absorb information more quickly than traditional reading methods. By converting large amounts of text into spoken words, TTS technology facilitates faster information consumption, leading to improved productivity and time-saving advantages.
This is useful for users who need to skim through information quickly or who have limited time available. By adjusting the speech rate to their preferred speed, users can efficiently consume a larger volume of content in a shorter period. This time-saving aspect of TTS technology can benefit professionals, researchers, students, or anyone seeking to optimize their workflow and productivity.
Choosing The Right Text-to-Speech Plugin For Your Site
Here are some important things to consider when choosing a text-to-speech (TTS) plugin to ensure the best fit for your site’s accessibility needs, customization preferences, and specific technical requirements:
Compatibility and Integration
Check if the TTS plugin is compatible with the WordPress version and other plugins or themes used on the site. This will ensure smooth integration without conflicts or compatibility issues.
Accessibility and Compliance
Verify that the TTS plugin complies with accessibility standards, such as WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). It should provide proper support for screen readers and assistive technologies, ensuring that individuals with disabilities can access the content effectively.
Voice Options
Assess the available voice options provided by the TTS plugin. Look for a wide range of voices, accents, and languages to cater to the diverse user base. Ensure that the plugin offers high-quality and natural-sounding voices to enhance the user experience.
Customization Options
Evaluate the level of customization the TTS plugin offers. Check if you can adjust the speech rate, volume, pitch, or emphasize certain words or phrases. The ability to customize the TTS settings allows you to align the audio output with the website’s branding and user preferences.
Multilingual Support
If your website caters to an international audience, consider TTS plugins that support multiple languages. Ensure that the plugin can accurately pronounce words and phrases in different languages to provide an inclusive experience for non-native speakers.
Responsive Design
Confirm that the TTS plugin is compatible with responsive design principles. It should work seamlessly across various devices and screen sizes, adapting to different layouts without compromising the audio quality or user experience.
Performance and Speed
Evaluate the performance of the TTS plugin. It should generate audio quickly and efficiently to minimize any delays or loading issues. Ensure that the plugin does not significantly impact the overall website performance or increase page load times.
Ease of Use
Consider the usability and user-friendliness of the TTS plugin. It should have a straightforward setup process, intuitive interface, and easy-to-use controls. Look for plugins that provide clear documentation, tutorials, or support resources to assist with installation and configuration.
Analytics
Some plugins offer detailed audio analytics that let you track important metrics to understand how your audience interacts with your audio content and gain valuabe insights into the listening behavior of your users.
Support and Updates
Check the developer’s track record for providing regular updates and support for the TTS plugin. Ensure that the plugin is actively maintained and compatible with the latest WordPress versions. Look for a responsive support team or community forums where you can seek assistance if needed.
Pricing and Licensing
Evaluate the pricing model and licensing terms of the TTS plugin. Determine whether it aligns with your (or your client’s) budget and requirements. Some plugins offer free versions with limited features, while others may have premium plans or subscription-based pricing.
Now that we have looked at all of the above, let’s look at some actual plugins that will add text-to-speech capabilities to WordPress.
Text-to-Speech Plugins For WordPress
Here are some text-to-speech plugins that offer a range of features to amplify the impact of your content, boost user engagement, and create a more inclusive online environment:
Play.ht
Play.ht makes converting articles into spoken words easy.
Play.ht converts your articles, blog posts, courses, and more into spoken word audio using cutting-edge Text-to-Speech technology and SEO-friendly embedded audio players.
The WordPress plugin integrates with Play.ht’s SaaS platform and lets you choose from a vast selection of over 800 high-quality and realistic AI Text-to-Speech voices in more than 140 languages, and create RSS podcast feeds that can be submitted to various podcasting platforms.
It also supports various post types, offers detailed audio analytics, and three types of fully customizable and white-labeled embedded audio players, so you can match the look and feel of your website.
PlayHT’s analytics dashboard lets you gain useful insights about your audience’s listening behavior. (Source: WordPress.org)
Key Features of Play.ht Text-to-Speech Plugin for WordPress:
Access to 800+ high-quality Text-to-Speech AI voices, improving content accessibility and user engagement.
Share your articles as audio on popular social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
Publish articles and blog posts as podcasts on iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, expanding your content’s reach.
Detailed audio analytics provide a comprehensive view of your audio performance.
Use a state-of-the-art Text-to-Voice editor to fine-tune the audio of your articles.
Play.ht offers a free trial with 100 free words to test the conversion process. A paid account lets you white-label and brand the audio player as your own and access a range of other features.
BeyondWords offers a seamless solution to automatically create lifelike audio versions of your WordPress posts and pages with customizable players and advanced text-to-speech algorithms.
To use the plugin, you will need to create a BeyondWords account (you can start with a free account). Then, copy the project ID and API key from your dashboard, and download and set up the WordPress plugin.
BeyondWords offers access to a wide range of neural voices from top providers like Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure. You can also explore premium neural voices exclusive to BeyondWords, including voice clones of professional voice actors. They also offer a voice cloning service that lets you develop a bespoke custom voice for your brand.
With BeyondWords, you can easily embed audio players on your WordPress site, share your audio manually or via a URL, and download audios as mp3 files.
An example post integrating BeyondWords TTS functionality. (Source: WordPress.org)
Key Features of BeyondWords Text-to-Speech Plugin for WordPress:
Effortless Conversion: Choose which pages and posts you want to convert into audio and BeyondWords automatically creates audio versions and embeds them via a customizable player.
Lifelike AI Voices: The platform uses AI voices enhanced by customizable and advanced natural language processing (NLP) algorithms that ensure optimal pronunciation of elements like names, numbers, and dates, while filtering out unnecessary elements.
Text-to-Speech Editor: Create or edit audio directly in the intuitive Text-to-Speech Editor. You can customize the audio to suit your preferences and refine the spoken-word experience.
Curate Playlists and Podcast Feeds: Create custom playlists that can be embedded, shared via URL, or distributed through podcast feeds to platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Analytics and Monetization: Access valuable insights with project-level analytics. Track listener engagement and leverage the data to optimize your content strategy, monetize your audio content with self-serve audio advertising, or connect programmatic advertising platforms using VAST integration.
ResponsiveVoice Text To Speech plugin for WordPress provides access to an HTML5-based Text-To-Speech library designed to add voice features across all your devices, making your content accessible and engaging for all users, regardless of their device.
An example post with ResponsiveVoice TTS plugin enabled. (Source: WordPress.org)
Key Features:
Tap the button and listen to any post or page instantly.
Place Listen buttons anywhere on your posts or pages using shortcodes.
Support for 51 languages and 168 voices, giving you a wide range of options.
Unlimited text to speech capabilities.
Complies with Web Accessibility Compliance Group 2.0, ADA, and BS 8878:2010 guidelines.
Free API Key unlocks access to all available voices.
Customize the Listen button appearance using shortcodes, including voice parameters, button text, pitch, volume, and rate adjustments.
Read a whole page or specific sections of text by enclosing them in tags.
No installation of cURL or any other requirements necessary.
Remove the ResponsiveVoice branding with the commercial license option.
Experience similar voices in case the selected voice is unavailable on certain platforms, ensuring consistent performance.
ResponsiveVoice is officially supported by most browsers.
Text to Audio plugin for WordPress is a free plugin that lets you add text-to-speech functionality to your site, so users can read your content aloud in over 20 languages.
Customize the listen button and add it anywhere in your content using a shortcode.
Key Features:
Easily add a play button to any post or page, enabling visitors to listen to your content with a single click.
Unlimited text to speech capabilities, ensuring that you can convert as much text as needed into high-quality audio.
Customize the play button’s color, width, and text based on your site’s language through a convenient filter.
Get a live preview of the play button during the customization process, to ensure a seamless blend with your site’s design.
Complete control over button appearance and styling using custom CSS.
Change the listening language to any language supported by the plugin.
Over 20 voices available.
Ability to customize the play button directly in the block editor.
Add the play button anywhere in your content using a shortcode.
The plugin is built on the browser speechSynthesis API , so the availability of languages and voices may vary depending on the device and browser used to access your content. Also, the voices sound robotic, but if you are looking to add basic TTS functionality with simple customization options, this is a free plugin you may want to consider.
GSpeech uses Google’s advanced speech synthesis technology to add automatic text-to-speech functionality to your website.
While the voices sound robotic, the plugin does have some nice features, such as the ability to listen to any section of text by highlighting it on your page.
Highlight any section of text to hear it spoken.
Additionally, the free version offers different speaker styles and customizable settings.
GSpeech settings screen
Key Features:
Listen to any text on your site: GSpeech allows your visitors to listen to any text content on your website, from articles and blog posts to product descriptions and menus.
Select and listen: Users can simply select a portion of text, and the speaker will automatically appear, turning the selected text into speech and providing a seamless and intuitive way for visitors to engage with your content.
Flexible Auto-Play: Set auto-play for content to ensure your audio starts at a specific moment and configure the auto-play timeout.
Greeting audio: Create a greeting audio for your visitors.
Speaking menus: Users can listen to menus by hovering over them, for more accessible and user-friendly navigation.
Multi-Language Support: 58 languages supported by Google’s speech synthesis technology.
Customizable and Versatile: GSpeech offers a wide range of customization options. Choose from 40 speaker types, customize TTS block styles, tooltip styles, and even set custom events.
Unlimited text to speech: Convert unlimited text to speech.
Easy administration: The plugin provides a user-friendly administration panel with live previews that lets you fine-tune settings and see the changes in real-time.
The Pro version of the plugin gives you access to unlimited TTS blocks, more features and professional support.
Take Your Site To The Next Level and Convert Text Into Audio
AI-powered text-to-speech technologies offer many benefits to businesses and their users, such as accessibility, convenience, enhanced user experience, language learning support, improved productivity, multilingual capabilities, even entertainment experiences.
The rapid evolution of TTS voice generation from its robotic and expressionless origins to its current state of ultra-realism and human-like quality has been driven by advancements in machine learning, large-scale speech datasets, waveform synthesis methods, and voice cloning technologies. As these technologies continue to improve, we can expect synthesized voices to become even more indistinguishable from human speech and have a profound impact on various applications.
Incorporating TTS plugins into your WordPress site opens up new possibilities for engaging with users and will help you reach a broader audience. Depending on your needs and budget, WordPress TTS plugins range anywhere from free plugins with basic options and robotic voices, to next-level AI-powered solutions with advanced integration features and ultra-realistic human-like voices (even clone your own).
Hopefully, this article has given you something to think about — maybe even have an AI-voice think it aloud and narrate it for you 🙂
If you plan to add text-to-speech to your WordPress site, consider using WPMU DEV hosting. Our hosting is ideal for storing and delivering high-quality audio to your audience and meets all the requirements for ensuring trouble-free TTS plugin installations (e.g. cURL library).
Adding text-to-speech (TTS) to your WordPress website can make your site more accessible to people with disabilities and enhance the experience of users that prefer listening to content over reading. Here are some of the best TTS plugins you can use to convert text into audio.
Accessibility and user experience play a crucial role in the success of your website. Text-to-speech brings a whole new dimension to content consumption and provide a convenient and engaging experience for your visitors by converting written text into natural-sounding speech.
In this post, we provide a basic guide for beginners on text-to-speech (TTS), and take a look at some of the best WordPress text-to-speech plugins, including both free and premium options. We’ll also discuss some of the factors you should consider when choosing a TTS plugin for your website.
Text-to-Speech (TTS) is a technology that converts written text into spoken words. It is a valuable tool that allows computers and digital devices to communicate information audibly, enabling users to listen to written content instead of reading it.
TTS systems employ various algorithms and linguistic techniques to analyze and transform text into synthesized speech. This technology has gained popularity due to its ability to make digital content more accessible, inclusive, and convenient for a wide range of users.
How Does Text-to-Speech Work?
Text-to-Speech technology utilizes a combination of text analysis, linguistic processing, and voice synthesis to convert written text into audible speech. The process typically involves the following steps:
 Text Analysis: The TTS system analyzes the input text, breaking it down into smaller linguistic units, such as words, phrases, and sentences. This step involves identifying punctuation, capitalization, and special symbols to understand the structure and meaning of the text.
Linguistic Processing: The system then applies linguistic rules and algorithms to interpret the text’s syntax, grammar, and context. This includes handling word pronunciation, sentence intonation, and language-specific rules. TTS systems often employ language models and phonetic databases to ensure accurate and natural-sounding speech.
Voice Synthesis: Once the text is analyzed and processed, the TTS system generates speech by transforming the processed text into audio signals. The system uses pre-recorded human speech segments or synthetic voices to create the spoken output. The synthesized speech is then played back through speakers or headphones, allowing users to listen to the converted text.
It’s important to note that with the recent explosion and proliferation of new AI technologies, TTS voice generation has undergone a remarkable transformation, progressing rapidly from its earlier robotic and expressionless state to becoming ultra-realistic and remarkably human-like. This evolution has been driven by several advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques.
By leveraging deep neural networks and sophisticated algorithms, researchers have been able to enhance the quality, naturalness, and expressiveness of synthesized voices.
One crucial factor behind this progress is the availability of vast amounts of high-quality speech data for training purposes. With the advent of large-scale voice datasets, TTS models can now learn from diverse and extensive samples of human speech, capturing the nuances of pronunciation, intonation, and pacing.
This abundance of data enables the models to grasp the intricacies of human vocal expression, resulting in more lifelike and engaging synthesized voices.
Furthermore, researchers have focused on refining the underlying architecture of TTS systems. Waveform synthesis methods, such as WaveNet and Tacotron, have significantly contributed to the improved realism of generated voices. These models employ complex neural networks to directly generate raw audio waveforms, capturing the subtleties of human speech at a granular level.
By modeling speech patterns and acoustic features with higher fidelity, these systems can produce more natural and human-like voices.
Voice cloning technologies have also played a prominent role in advancing TTS realism. Through voice cloning, it is now possible to create a synthesized voice that closely resembles a specific individual, including celebrities or historical figures. This process involves training the TTS models with a significant amount of voice recordings from the target speaker.
By capturing the unique timbre, cadence, and vocal characteristics of the person, voice cloning allows for the creation of personalized and highly authentic synthetic voices.
Here are several compelling reasons for using Text-to-Speech technology on your website:
Accessibility
TTS enhances accessibility and inclusivity and promotes equal access to digital content to a wider audience. It does this by providing an alternative means for users with visual impairments such as blindness or low vision to consume your content and engage with your information just as easily as those without such disabilities.
TTS plugins also benefit users with diverse abilities. For instance, individuals with reading difficulties, or learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, can rely on TTS to overcome reading challenges. TTS technology can read the text aloud, helping users to comprehend the content more easily and improve their overall browsing experience.
User Experience Enhancement
One of the main benefits of using TTS in WordPress is the improvement of the user experience. TTS makes content more engaging, immersive, and interactive, providing an audio option for consuming content, and catering to different users’ learning styles and preferences.
Some users may prefer listening to the text rather than reading, especially when multitasking or on the go. Adding an audio element to your content through TTS can create a more immersive experience for users, leading to better retention and comprehension and improve SEO metrics such as page on time.
So, if your site offers educational articles or blog posts, a TTS plugin allows visitors to listen to the content instead of reading it and engage with the material in a more interactive, immersive, and dynamic way, which can lead to increased engagement and greater user satisfaction.
Additionally, you can expand your audience by enabling users to listen to your articles as podcasts and submit these to various podcasting platforms like iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts.
Language Learning and Pronunciation
TTS systems can assist language learners in enhancing their pronunciation skills and understanding of spoken language and be valuable tools for individuals facing language barriers. By listening to the synthesized speech, learners can compare their own pronunciation and practice correct intonation and accents, leading to more accurate and natural-sounding spoken communication.
Converting text into spoken words in the user’s native or preferred language, breaks down communication barriers and fosters inclusivity. By providing a means to listen to content in their native language, individuals with different linguistic backgrounds can access and comprehend your written information more effectively.
Various WordPress TTS plugins offer multilingual support, enabling you to reach a global audience effectively.
Multitasking and Convenience
TTS enables users to listen to content while engaged in other tasks or situations where reading may not be feasible. People can consume your information while driving, exercising, or performing other activities (e.g. while cooking dinner), making it a convenient ‘hands-free’ option for busy individuals who want to stay productive and informed.
The flexibility and customization options provided by TTS plugins further enhance user experience by offering a range of customization features, including the ability to choose from different voices, accents, and reading styles. You can select the most suitable voice that aligns with your brand’s tone and style and website design, creating a consistent and personalized experience for your users.
Productivity and Efficiency
TTS enables users to listen, process, and absorb information more quickly than traditional reading methods. By converting large amounts of text into spoken words, TTS technology facilitates faster information consumption, leading to improved productivity and time-saving advantages.
This is useful for users who need to skim through information quickly or who have limited time available. By adjusting the speech rate to their preferred speed, users can efficiently consume a larger volume of content in a shorter period. This time-saving aspect of TTS technology can benefit professionals, researchers, students, or anyone seeking to optimize their workflow and productivity.
Choosing The Right Text-to-Speech Plugin For Your Site
Here are some important things to consider when choosing a text-to-speech (TTS) plugin to ensure the best fit for your site’s accessibility needs, customization preferences, and specific technical requirements:
Compatibility and Integration
Check if the TTS plugin is compatible with the WordPress version and other plugins or themes used on the site. This will ensure smooth integration without conflicts or compatibility issues.
Accessibility and Compliance
Verify that the TTS plugin complies with accessibility standards, such as WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). It should provide proper support for screen readers and assistive technologies, ensuring that individuals with disabilities can access the content effectively.
Voice Options
Assess the available voice options provided by the TTS plugin. Look for a wide range of voices, accents, and languages to cater to the diverse user base. Ensure that the plugin offers high-quality and natural-sounding voices to enhance the user experience.
Customization Options
Evaluate the level of customization the TTS plugin offers. Check if you can adjust the speech rate, volume, pitch, or emphasize certain words or phrases. The ability to customize the TTS settings allows you to align the audio output with the website’s branding and user preferences.
Multilingual Support
If your website caters to an international audience, consider TTS plugins that support multiple languages. Ensure that the plugin can accurately pronounce words and phrases in different languages to provide an inclusive experience for non-native speakers.
Responsive Design
Confirm that the TTS plugin is compatible with responsive design principles. It should work seamlessly across various devices and screen sizes, adapting to different layouts without compromising the audio quality or user experience.
Performance and Speed
Evaluate the performance of the TTS plugin. It should generate audio quickly and efficiently to minimize any delays or loading issues. Ensure that the plugin does not significantly impact the overall website performance or increase page load times.
Ease of Use
Consider the usability and user-friendliness of the TTS plugin. It should have a straightforward setup process, intuitive interface, and easy-to-use controls. Look for plugins that provide clear documentation, tutorials, or support resources to assist with installation and configuration.
Analytics
Some plugins offer detailed audio analytics that let you track important metrics to understand how your audience interacts with your audio content and gain valuabe insights into the listening behavior of your users.
Support and Updates
Check the developer’s track record for providing regular updates and support for the TTS plugin. Ensure that the plugin is actively maintained and compatible with the latest WordPress versions. Look for a responsive support team or community forums where you can seek assistance if needed.
Pricing and Licensing
Evaluate the pricing model and licensing terms of the TTS plugin. Determine whether it aligns with your (or your client’s) budget and requirements. Some plugins offer free versions with limited features, while others may have premium plans or subscription-based pricing.
Now that we have looked at all of the above, let’s look at some actual plugins that will add text-to-speech capabilities to WordPress.
Text-to-Speech Plugins For WordPress
Here are some text-to-speech plugins that offer a range of features to amplify the impact of your content, boost user engagement, and create a more inclusive online environment:
Play.ht
Play.ht makes converting articles into spoken words easy.
Play.ht converts your articles, blog posts, courses, and more into spoken word audio using cutting-edge Text-to-Speech technology and SEO-friendly embedded audio players.
The WordPress plugin integrates with Play.ht’s SaaS platform and lets you choose from a vast selection of over 800 high-quality and realistic AI Text-to-Speech voices in more than 140 languages, and create RSS podcast feeds that can be submitted to various podcasting platforms.
It also supports various post types, offers detailed audio analytics, and three types of fully customizable and white-labeled embedded audio players, so you can match the look and feel of your website.
PlayHT’s analytics dashboard lets you gain useful insights about your audience’s listening behavior. (Source: WordPress.org)
Key Features of Play.ht Text-to-Speech Plugin for WordPress:
Access to 800+ high-quality Text-to-Speech AI voices, improving content accessibility and user engagement.
Share your articles as audio on popular social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
Publish articles and blog posts as podcasts on iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, expanding your content’s reach.
Detailed audio analytics provide a comprehensive view of your audio performance.
Use a state-of-the-art Text-to-Voice editor to fine-tune the audio of your articles.
Play.ht offers a free trial with 100 free words to test the conversion process. A paid account lets you white-label and brand the audio player as your own and access a range of other features.
BeyondWords offers a seamless solution to automatically create lifelike audio versions of your WordPress posts and pages with customizable players and advanced text-to-speech algorithms.
To use the plugin, you will need to create a BeyondWords account (you can start with a free account). Then, copy the project ID and API key from your dashboard, and download and set up the WordPress plugin.
BeyondWords offers access to a wide range of neural voices from top providers like Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure. You can also explore premium neural voices exclusive to BeyondWords, including voice clones of professional voice actors. They also offer a voice cloning service that lets you develop a bespoke custom voice for your brand.
With BeyondWords, you can easily embed audio players on your WordPress site, share your audio manually or via a URL, and download audios as mp3 files.
An example post integrating BeyondWords TTS functionality. (Source: WordPress.org)
Key Features of BeyondWords Text-to-Speech Plugin for WordPress:
Effortless Conversion: Choose which pages and posts you want to convert into audio and BeyondWords automatically creates audio versions and embeds them via a customizable player.
Lifelike AI Voices: The platform uses AI voices enhanced by customizable and advanced natural language processing (NLP) algorithms that ensure optimal pronunciation of elements like names, numbers, and dates, while filtering out unnecessary elements.
Text-to-Speech Editor: Create or edit audio directly in the intuitive Text-to-Speech Editor. You can customize the audio to suit your preferences and refine the spoken-word experience.
Curate Playlists and Podcast Feeds: Create custom playlists that can be embedded, shared via URL, or distributed through podcast feeds to platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Analytics and Monetization: Access valuable insights with project-level analytics. Track listener engagement and leverage the data to optimize your content strategy, monetize your audio content with self-serve audio advertising, or connect programmatic advertising platforms using VAST integration.
ResponsiveVoice Text To Speech plugin for WordPress provides access to an HTML5-based Text-To-Speech library designed to add voice features across all your devices, making your content accessible and engaging for all users, regardless of their device.
An example post with ResponsiveVoice TTS plugin enabled. (Source: WordPress.org)
Key Features:
Tap the button and listen to any post or page instantly.
Place Listen buttons anywhere on your posts or pages using shortcodes.
Support for 51 languages and 168 voices, giving you a wide range of options.
Unlimited text to speech capabilities.
Complies with Web Accessibility Compliance Group 2.0, ADA, and BS 8878:2010 guidelines.
Free API Key unlocks access to all available voices.
Customize the Listen button appearance using shortcodes, including voice parameters, button text, pitch, volume, and rate adjustments.
Read a whole page or specific sections of text by enclosing them in tags.
No installation of cURL or any other requirements necessary.
Remove the ResponsiveVoice branding with the commercial license option.
Experience similar voices in case the selected voice is unavailable on certain platforms, ensuring consistent performance.
ResponsiveVoice is officially supported by most browsers.
Text to Audio plugin for WordPress is a free plugin that lets you add text-to-speech functionality to your site, so users can read your content aloud in over 20 languages.
Customize the listen button and add it anywhere in your content using a shortcode.
Key Features:
Easily add a play button to any post or page, enabling visitors to listen to your content with a single click.
Unlimited text to speech capabilities, ensuring that you can convert as much text as needed into high-quality audio.
Customize the play button’s color, width, and text based on your site’s language through a convenient filter.
Get a live preview of the play button during the customization process, to ensure a seamless blend with your site’s design.
Complete control over button appearance and styling using custom CSS.
Change the listening language to any language supported by the plugin.
Over 20 voices available.
Ability to customize the play button directly in the block editor.
Add the play button anywhere in your content using a shortcode.
The plugin is built on the browser speechSynthesis API , so the availability of languages and voices may vary depending on the device and browser used to access your content. Also, the voices sound robotic, but if you are looking to add basic TTS functionality with simple customization options, this is a free plugin you may want to consider.
GSpeech uses Google’s advanced speech synthesis technology to add automatic text-to-speech functionality to your website.
While the voices sound robotic, the plugin does have some nice features, such as the ability to listen to any section of text by highlighting it on your page.
Highlight any section of text to hear it spoken.
Additionally, the free version offers different speaker styles and customizable settings.
GSpeech settings screen
Key Features:
Listen to any text on your site: GSpeech allows your visitors to listen to any text content on your website, from articles and blog posts to product descriptions and menus.
Select and listen: Users can simply select a portion of text, and the speaker will automatically appear, turning the selected text into speech and providing a seamless and intuitive way for visitors to engage with your content.
Flexible Auto-Play: Set auto-play for content to ensure your audio starts at a specific moment and configure the auto-play timeout.
Greeting audio: Create a greeting audio for your visitors.
Speaking menus: Users can listen to menus by hovering over them, for more accessible and user-friendly navigation.
Multi-Language Support: 58 languages supported by Google’s speech synthesis technology.
Customizable and Versatile: GSpeech offers a wide range of customization options. Choose from 40 speaker types, customize TTS block styles, tooltip styles, and even set custom events.
Unlimited text to speech: Convert unlimited text to speech.
Easy administration: The plugin provides a user-friendly administration panel with live previews that lets you fine-tune settings and see the changes in real-time.
The Pro version of the plugin gives you access to unlimited TTS blocks, more features and professional support.
Note: The plugin requires the curl library to be enabled on your hosting to function correctly.
Take Your Site To The Next Level and Convert Text Into Audio
AI-powered text-to-speech technologies offer many benefits to businesses and their users, such as accessibility, convenience, enhanced user experience, language learning support, improved productivity, multilingual capabilities, even entertainment experiences.
The rapid evolution of TTS voice generation from its robotic and expressionless origins to its current state of ultra-realism and human-like quality has been driven by advancements in machine learning, large-scale speech datasets, waveform synthesis methods, and voice cloning technologies. As these technologies continue to improve, we can expect synthesized voices to become even more indistinguishable from human speech and have a profound impact on various applications.
Incorporating TTS plugins into your WordPress site opens up new possibilities for engaging with users and will help you reach a broader audience. Depending on your needs and budget, WordPress TTS plugins range anywhere from free plugins with basic options and robotic voices, to next-level AI-powered solutions with advanced integration features and ultra-realistic human-like voices (even clone your own).
Hopefully, this article has given you something to think about — maybe even have an AI-voice think it aloud and narrate it for you 🙂
If you plan to add text-to-speech to your WordPress site, consider using WPMU DEV hosting. Our hosting is ideal for storing and delivering high-quality audio to your audience and meets all the requirements for ensuring trouble-free TTS plugin installations (e.g. curl library).
Looking for ways to further optimize your WordPress site’s performance? Easy…switch on Hummingbird‘s new Delay JavaScript Execution feature!
Most sites nowadays are laden with JavaScript files and inline scripts, which can be resource intensive and affect site performance and PageSpeed scores in areas like site rendering and load time.
As you will learn in this article, delaying the execution of JavaScript files to prioritise the load of more critical elements first can keep the overall load time of your site in check and improve your PageSpeed scores.
Even better, we’ll show you how to automate the whole process with just one click using our WordPress optimization plugin, Hummingbird.
Why Delaying JavaScript Execution Helps To Optimize Site Performance
As mentioned earlier, sites nowadays are loaded with 3rd-party scripts for serving advertisements, tracking engagement, security verification, etc., which can block pages from rendering quickly on users’ browsers and affect your site’s user experience and search engine rankings.
Holding these scripts off from loading on your site until there’s actual user interaction with the page can significantly improve areas of your site’s performance like:
1. Faster Page Loading Times
By delaying the execution of JavaScript files until users interact with the page, web pages will load faster, allowing users to access and interact with the site more quickly. This helps improve user experience and increase user engagement.
2. Improved Rendering Performance
Browser rendering engines need to process JavaScript before they can display the page content. Delaying JavaScript execution until after users interact the page content has been loaded helps the browser render the page more quickly and efficiently. This means users can see and interact with the web page sooner.
3. Reduced HTTP Requests
Combining JavaScript files and loading them asynchronously can reduce the number of HTTP requests made to the server, which also helps to speed up page loading times.
4. Increased Google PageSpeed Insights Score
Google considers page speed as a ranking factor for search results, and delaying JavaScript execution can improve your site’s PageSpeed Insights score, potentially leading to better search engine rankings.
5. Lower Server Load
By loading JavaScript asynchronously and combining files, fewer requests are made to the server, reducing its workload, and helping to prevent server crashes or slow responses during high-traffic situations.
Improving PageSpeed Score Recommendations
Want to improve your PageSpeed Insights score? Try delaying JavaScript file execution.
Delaying JavaScript execution on your site can improve your Google PageSpeed score by addressing the following recommendations:
Remove unused JavaScript
This recommendation suggests eliminating unused or unnecessary JavaScript code from your web pages. Unused JavaScript can increase your page’s load time, as the browser has to download, parse, and execute the code even if it’s not being used.
By removing any unused JavaScript code, you can decrease the file size and improve your website’s overall performance.
Total blocking time
Total blocking time is a metric that measures the amount of time between the First Contentful Paint (FCP) and the Time to Interactive (TTI) during which the main thread was blocked for long enough to prevent input responsiveness.
In simple terms, it quantifies the duration when the page becomes unresponsive due to processing heavy JavaScript tasks. Lowering the total blocking time makes your website more responsive and improves user experience.
Minimize main thread work
The main thread is responsible for executing JavaScript, style calculations, layout, and other tasks required to display a web page. Minimizing main thread work refers to the process of optimizing the code and reducing the time the main thread spends on heavy tasks. This can be done by removing unnecessary JavaScript, splitting long tasks into smaller chunks, and optimizing the code’s execution.
A lighter workload on the main thread results in faster page loading, improved rendering, and enhanced user experience.
Time to interactive (TTI)
This performance metric measures the time it takes for a web page to become fully interactive and responsive to user input. A page is considered interactive when the main thread is free from heavy tasks, and users can interact with the elements on the screen, such as clicking buttons or scrolling.
Improving the TTI by optimizing JavaScript, splitting large tasks, and reducing render-blocking resources ensures a better user experience by allowing users to interact with the page more quickly.
Reduce JS execution time
Reducing JavaScript execution time involves optimizing the code to execute faster and use fewer resources. This can be achieved through techniques such as code minification, removing unused JavaScript, and optimizing algorithms.
Reducing the execution time leads to faster rendering, decreased total blocking time, and better responsiveness, providing a better user experience.
First Contentful Paint (FCP)
This is a performance metric that measures the time it takes for the browser to render the first visible element (text, image, or other content) of a web page. A faster FCP equates to a quicker initial page load, providing users with a visual feedback that the page is loading. Improving FCP requires optimizing critical rendering paths, delaying non-critical JavaScript execution, and prioritizing the loading of visible content.
A faster FCP significantly contributes to a better user experience and improved web page performance.
Delaying JavaScript Execution Methods
While faster page load times, reduced render-blocking, and prioritized content loading provide many benefits to users and can deliver higher PageSpeed scores, the actual methods available for delaying JavaScript execution on WordPress sites can be challenging for users without technical knowledge or web optimization skills.
For example, these methods can include:
Implement async or defer attributes: This requires you to manually add async or defer attributes to your JavaScript files in the HTML header, which tells the browser not to block the page rendering while processing the JavaScript files.
Combine JavaScript files: Use online tools or WordPress plugins to combine multiple JavaScript files into a single file, helping to reduce the number of HTTP requests and speed up page loading times.
Minify JavaScript files: Use online tools or WordPress plugins to reduce JavaScript file size, which helps to improve page loading times.
Prioritize critical JavaScript: Identify the critical JavaScript that needs to be loaded immediately to ensure proper functionality, and then load the remaining JavaScript files after the page content has been rendered.
While there are a few WordPress plugins available that can handle some of these tasks for you and help you to delay or defer JavaScript execution, our Hummingbird plugin does all of the above and more with the click of a button.
How to Use Hummingbird’s Delay JavaScript Execution Feature
The new optimization feature of Hummingbird delays the loading of all JavaScript files and inline scripts until there is user interaction on the page (e.g. mouse movement, keyboard action or screen tap) and improves all of the PageSpeed recommendations described earlier.
To enable this feature, make sure that Hummingbird is installed and activated on your site, then navigate to Hummingbird > Asset Optimization > Extra Optimization in your WordPress admin and switch on the Enable Delay Javascript toggle button in the Tools > Delay Javascript section, then click Save Changes.
Enable Hummingbird’s Delay JavaScript feature to improve your site’s performance.
Alternatively, you can enable the feature from the plugin’s main dashboard.
Enable Delay JavaScript Execution from Hummingbird’s dashboard.
Once the Delay JavaScript Execution feature has been enabled, it automatically goes to work, delaying the loading of any non-critical JavaScript files on your page that are not required above-the-fold.
The feature’s settings give you access to options like being able to specify a timeout for the scripts to load if no user interaction is detected, and the option to exclude critical JavaScript files from from being delayed on load by specifying their URLs or keywords.
Hummingbird delays the loading of JavaScript files until a set timeout limit is reached or a user interacts with the page.
If enabling this feature breaks something on your site and you identify additional critical Javascript resources which are essential to render the page, simply add them to the Excluded JavaScript Files area to exclude them from being delayed.
If there is no user interaction on the page beyond a set threshold, the JavaScript assets are forced to load. The default timeout is set to 20 seconds, but you can select a different value from the Timeout dropdown menu (currently ranging between 5-30 seconds).
Select a timeout option from the dropdown menu.
Notes
Enabling JavaScript Execution will automatically disable the Combine Compression option to ensure that your site’s scripts are loaded in their correct order.
The feature will only work when you’re connected to The Hub, as it pulls the list of continuously updated predefined exclusions from the API.
You can easily reverse any changes made by this feature by simply disabling the toggle and clicking save.
Delay JavaScript and Speed Up WordPress
Hummingbird’s Delay JavaScript feature is available in both the Pro and free versions of the plugin. We recommend enabling this feature and testing your site using the PageSpeed Insights tool.
If you experience any issues using Hummingbird, check out the plugin’s documentation or contact our 24/7 support team for immediate expert support.
Looking for ways to further optimize your WordPress site’s performance? Easy…switch on Hummingbird‘s new Delay JavaScript Execution feature!
Most sites nowadays are laden with JavaScript files and inline scripts, which can be resource intensive and affect site performance and PageSpeed scores in areas like site rendering and load time.
As you will learn in this article, delaying the execution of JavaScript files to prioritise the load of more critical elements first can keep the overall load time of your site in check and improve your PageSpeed scores.
Even better, we’ll show you how to automate the whole process with just one click using our WordPress optimization plugin, Hummingbird (note: Pro feature only).
Why Delaying JavaScript Execution Helps To Optimize Site Performance
As mentioned earlier, sites nowadays are loaded with 3rd-party scripts for serving advertisements, tracking engagement, security verification, etc., which can block pages from rendering quickly on users’ browsers and affect your site’s user experience and search engine rankings.
Holding these scripts off from loading on your site until there’s actual user interaction with the page can significantly improve areas of your site’s performance like:
1. Faster Page Loading Times
By delaying the execution of JavaScript files until users interact with the page, web pages will load faster, allowing users to access and interact with the site more quickly. This helps improve user experience and increase user engagement.
2. Improved Rendering Performance
Browser rendering engines need to process JavaScript before they can display the page content. Delaying JavaScript execution until after users interact the page content has been loaded helps the browser render the page more quickly and efficiently. This means users can see and interact with the web page sooner.
3. Reduced HTTP Requests
Combining JavaScript files and loading them asynchronously can reduce the number of HTTP requests made to the server, which also helps to speed up page loading times.
4. Increased Google PageSpeed Insights Score
Google considers page speed as a ranking factor for search results, and delaying JavaScript execution can improve your site’s PageSpeed Insights score, potentially leading to better search engine rankings.
5. Lower Server Load
By loading JavaScript asynchronously and combining files, fewer requests are made to the server, reducing its workload, and helping to prevent server crashes or slow responses during high-traffic situations.
Improving PageSpeed Score Recommendations
Want to improve your PageSpeed Insights score? Try delaying JavaScript file execution.
Delaying JavaScript execution on your site can improve your Google PageSpeed score by addressing the following recommendations:
Remove unused JavaScript
This recommendation suggests eliminating unused or unnecessary JavaScript code from your web pages. Unused JavaScript can increase your page’s load time, as the browser has to download, parse, and execute the code even if it’s not being used.
By removing any unused JavaScript code, you can decrease the file size and improve your website’s overall performance.
Total blocking time
Total blocking time is a metric that measures the amount of time between the First Contentful Paint (FCP) and the Time to Interactive (TTI) during which the main thread was blocked for long enough to prevent input responsiveness.
In simple terms, it quantifies the duration when the page becomes unresponsive due to processing heavy JavaScript tasks. Lowering the total blocking time makes your website more responsive and improves user experience.
Minimize main thread work
The main thread is responsible for executing JavaScript, style calculations, layout, and other tasks required to display a web page. Minimizing main thread work refers to the process of optimizing the code and reducing the time the main thread spends on heavy tasks. This can be done by removing unnecessary JavaScript, splitting long tasks into smaller chunks, and optimizing the code’s execution.
A lighter workload on the main thread results in faster page loading, improved rendering, and enhanced user experience.
Time to interactive (TTI)
This performance metric measures the time it takes for a web page to become fully interactive and responsive to user input. A page is considered interactive when the main thread is free from heavy tasks, and users can interact with the elements on the screen, such as clicking buttons or scrolling.
Improving the TTI by optimizing JavaScript, splitting large tasks, and reducing render-blocking resources ensures a better user experience by allowing users to interact with the page more quickly.
Reduce JS execution time
Reducing JavaScript execution time involves optimizing the code to execute faster and use fewer resources. This can be achieved through techniques such as code minification, removing unused JavaScript, and optimizing algorithms.
Reducing the execution time leads to faster rendering, decreased total blocking time, and better responsiveness, providing a better user experience.
First Contentful Paint (FCP)
This is a performance metric that measures the time it takes for the browser to render the first visible element (text, image, or other content) of a web page. A faster FCP equates to a quicker initial page load, providing users with a visual feedback that the page is loading. Improving FCP requires optimizing critical rendering paths, delaying non-critical JavaScript execution, and prioritizing the loading of visible content.
A faster FCP significantly contributes to a better user experience and improved web page performance.
Delaying JavaScript Execution Methods
While faster page load times, reduced render-blocking, and prioritized content loading provide many benefits to users and can deliver higher PageSpeed scores, the actual methods available for delaying JavaScript execution on WordPress sites can be challenging for users without technical knowledge or web optimization skills.
For example, these methods can include:
Implement async or defer attributes: This requires you to manually add async or defer attributes to your JavaScript files in the HTML header, which tells the browser not to block the page rendering while processing the JavaScript files.
Combine JavaScript files: Use online tools or WordPress plugins to combine multiple JavaScript files into a single file, helping to reduce the number of HTTP requests and speed up page loading times.
Minify JavaScript files: Use online tools or WordPress plugins to reduce JavaScript file size, which helps to improve page loading times.
Prioritize critical JavaScript: Identify the critical JavaScript that needs to be loaded immediately to ensure proper functionality, and then load the remaining JavaScript files after the page content has been rendered.
While there are a few WordPress plugins available that can handle some of these tasks for you and help you to delay or defer JavaScript execution, our Hummingbird plugin does all of the above and more with the click of a button.
How to Use Hummingbird’s Delay JavaScript Execution Feature
The new optimization feature of Hummingbird delays the loading of all JavaScript files and inline scripts until there is user interaction on the page (e.g. mouse movement, keyboard action or screen tap) and improves all of the PageSpeed recommendations described earlier.
To enable this feature, make sure that Hummingbird is installed and activated on your site, then navigate to Hummingbird > Asset Optimization > Extra Optimization in your WordPress admin and switch on the Enable Delay Javascript toggle button in the Tools > Delay Javascript section, then click Save Changes.
Enable Hummingbird’s Delay JavaScript feature to improve your site’s performance.
Alternatively, you can enable the feature from the plugin’s main dashboard.
Enable Delay JavaScript Execution from Hummingbird’s dashboard.
Once the Delay JavaScript Execution feature has been enabled, it automatically goes to work, delaying the loading of any non-critical JavaScript files on your page that are not required above-the-fold.
The feature’s settings give you access to options like being able to specify a timeout for the scripts to load if no user interaction is detected, and the option to exclude critical JavaScript files from from being delayed on load by specifying their URLs or keywords.
Hummingbird delays the loading of JavaScript files until a set timeout limit is reached or a user interacts with the page.
If enabling this feature breaks something on your site and you identify additional critical Javascript resources which are essential to render the page, simply add them to the Excluded JavaScript Files area to exclude them from being delayed.
If there is no user interaction on the page beyond a set threshold, the JavaScript assets are forced to load. The default timeout is set to 20 seconds, but you can select a different value from the Timeout dropdown menu (currently ranging between 5-30 seconds).
Select a timeout option from the dropdown menu.
Notes
Enabling JavaScript Execution will automatically disable the Combine Compression option to ensure that your site’s scripts are loaded in their correct order.
The feature will only work when you’re connected to The Hub, as it pulls the list of continuously updated predefined exclusions from the API.
You can easily reverse any changes made by this feature by simply disabling the toggle and clicking save.
Delay JavaScript and Speed Up WordPress
Hummingbird’s Delay JavaScript feature is available as a Pro feature only. We recommend enabling this feature and testing your site using the PageSpeed Insights tool.
If you experience any issues using Hummingbird, check out the plugin’s documentation or contact our 24/7 support team for immediate expert support.
WPMU DEV’s free all-new and improved Broken Link Checker plugin saves you the time and tedious hassle of handling crucial link management tasks across all your WordPress sites.
“I have been looking to find an easier way to check for broken links. Thank you for making this tool so accessible.” Dena, WPMU DEV Member
Broken links are a negative indicator of site health and can have a major impact on your PageRank and your reputation. Staying on top of your site links is an essential and crucial aspect of good WordPress site management.
But… manually checking your content for broken links is time-consuming and tedious excruciating, especially if you manage multiple WordPress sites.
“This is potentially going to save a ton of time! Before now I’ve always done a manual check on all sites I create.” TNT Systems, WPMU DEV Member
This article shows you how to use our powerful link checking tool on unlimited WordPress sites – completely re-engineered with a top user-requested feature and a new API that works 20x faster, to deliver better and more accurate results, prevent negative SEO performance issues, and improve user experience.
We also include a comprehensive guide covering all you need to know about why link management is important and how to effectively manage broken links on all of your sites.
Let’s jump right in and take a look at the only tool you’ll ever need to check and repair broken links on unlimited WordPress sites.
WordPress Broken Link Checker (BLC) Plugin
Broken Link Checker is now even better and faster at finding broken links on WordPress sites.
WPMU DEV acquired Broken Link Checker many years back from ManageWP, and since then have implemented many tweaks and fixes to improve its capabilities, growing its popularity to 700K downloads and its user satisfaction to 4/5 stars.
[NB: Special shoutouts to Patrick Walker, Team Lead at WP Engine’s Customer Experience Operations Team for his hard work in collaboration with our engineers to get our plugin removed from WP Engine’s and Flywheel’s block list and to Kinsta for providing suggestions that led to the development of our new cloud-based tool.]
While we plan to continue maintaining and improving the old plugin version for the thousands of users who are still currently using it, starting from versions 2.0 and onward, we’ve also introduced a new cloud-based link checking plugin for WordPress.
Note: We’ll focus the rest of this article on our Cloud Link Checker. For more information on using the old (Local) BLC plugin, visit the plugin download page on WordPress.org.
Why Two Different Link Checking Engines?
The old Broken Link Checker plugin (we now call this version Local Link Checker) is a great tool currently used and loved by thousands of WordPress users to keep their URLs healthy.
If you love it, feel free to keep using it. Keep in mind, however, that it depends on your site’s resources to run scans, which can be affected by your hosting plan’s available resources, and, depending on what plugins are installed on your site, could cause conflicts or WP/PHP errors.
Our latest innovation — a cloud-based plugin — takes things to a whole new level and opens the door to an entirely new scope of possibilities that we couldn’t achieve before by integrating the best of the Local BLC plugin with cloud capabilities directly into The Hub (our all-in-one WordPress platform), all at no additional cost to users.
For example, some of the benefits of the new cloud-based BLC include:
Scalability: Cloud Link Checker runs on WPMU DEV’s engines not the individual site where the plugin is installed, so you can run broken link scans on sites of any size and server type.
Blazing Fast Scans: Being cloud-based means any dependencies on the performance of your server are eliminated, giving your scans a massive speed increase.
No Risk of Blocklisting: Pinging external sites repeatedly from your website raises suspicious flags with internet service providers and puts your site at risk of being blocklisted. Cloud BLC doesn’t use your site’s IP address, so there’s no risk of your site(s) being blocklisted.
Faster Updates and Instant Improvements: No more waiting for plugin version releases or worrying whether you site’s resources can handle the changes. We test, fix, and improve everything on the cloud and your site benefits instantly as soon as we deploy the changes and improvements to our engine..
Eliminate WordPress and PHP Errors: Our cloud-based link checker doesn’t run on your site’s resources, so you won’t experience site resource errors using the plugin.
Crawl Everything: Cloud Link Checker follows the same logic as search engine crawlers, so no URLs are missed on all standard pages and posts, menus, category pages, etc. Even better, use scheduled reports to discover broken links before the search engines see them.
WPMU DEV’s Cloud-based Link Checker provides better performance and faster speed.
Cloud BLC scans your site from top to bottom, monitoring external and internal links in your posts, pages, comments, blogroll – even custom fields.
It detects links that don’t work, as well as missing images and redirects. It will then notify you via the Broken Link Checker section of the Hub, or you can view a summary of the results in the plugin dashboard of your WordPress site.
“Love this new tool, especially since it runs off-site and doesn’t hog server resources.” Levi, WPMU DEV Member
Set Up
Whether you’re an existing Broken Link Checker plugin user or new to the tool, setup is a breeze.
You can set up the plugin from the WordPress dashboard plugin and from WPMU DEV’s Hub.
Let’s look at both methods.
From the WordPress Dashboard
Cloud Link Checker activation in the WordPress dashboard.
Install and activate the plugin.
Go to the Link Checker menu and select Cloud.
If you’re logged into WPMU DEV, click ‘Enable Cloud Engine’ (otherwise, the button will say ‘Connect to WPMU DEV’), and you’ll be taken through The Free Hub onboarding process, as well as the broken links checking tool component. This will lead you directly to the BLC service tab in The Free Hub.
From here, run a new scan. You’ll get a notification once the scan completes, so feel free to look around The Free Hub while you wait.
Once you receive notification that the scan is complete, you can view the results in the Broken Link Checker section of The Free Hub.
From The Hub
Broken Link Checker activation in The Hub.
After logging into The Hub, you’ll see Broken Link Checker listed as a new service in the menu (top & sidebar).
Activate this to install the plugin on the site.
Run a scan to see your results.
However you choose to install the Cloud Link Checker, the WordPress dashboard will display the Summary Report, while The Hub will have the Full Report – including the list of broken and dead links.
Scan results in the WordPress dashboard.
Click View Full Report to see the full scan report in The Hub.
The Hub displays a detailed list of your broken URLs after scanning.
Aside from locating your broken links, missing images, and redirects, the plugin has additional functions that let you schedule scans, send reports by email, search (with built-in filters), and export your lists for download.
Edit/Unlink Broken Links
Our members spoke…and we listened!
One of the most requested features for this tool was the ability to edit and unlink broken links.
We’re thrilled to announce that in addition to ignoring and reporting links as not broken, you can now also easily edit and unlink broken links from The Hub.
Simply click on the vertical ellipsis (3 dots) to the right of any link listed in the Hub’s scan report and select one of the available options.
Edit, Unlink, Ignore, or Report links as Not Broken.
Select Edit Link to point the link to a new URL, Unlink to remove the link and change it to plain text, or select one of the other options to ignore the link or to report false positives (note: we use Not Broken reports to improve BLC’s engine).
Note: New scans are temporarily disabled while the system is performing editing or unlinking operations. You can run a new scan after these processes have completed.
Also, to keep reports manageable, if the scan detects multiple instances of the same broken link URL, the report only displays the first 10 instances and notifies you how many other instances there are.
Scan reports are kept manageable by displaying only the first 10 URLs for the same broken link.
You can choose to edit or unlink only the first 10 visible links, or perform the operation on all instances of that same link.
Edit (or unlink) only the first 10 links or all links.
Note that the tool does not scan hardcoded links written in php files (eg template files, shortcodes, etc.).
Run Manual Scans
You can run a manual scan any time, in both the WordPress dashboard and The Hub. Just hit the blue Run Scan button. This can be helpful if you’ve done some clean up, and want to refresh your view of the list.
Schedule Scans & Send Reports by Email
Scheduling scans is done from the Broken Link Checker plugin section in the WordPress dashboard.
Schedule new scans for broken link checks in your WordPress dashboard.
At least one recipient must be added to schedule reports, so that it can be sent to a party via email.
Click on the cog icon to see the menu options for scanning.
From the Schedule Scan section, click Configure.
Check that you are on the Schedule Date tab from the top menu.
Choose the Frequency, from Daily, Weekly, Monthly.
Select desired time, day, or date from the dropdown options; then click Save.
The plugin provides many options for scheduling scans.
Now we will add recipients (at least one), so the report has a destination to be sent to:
Click on the Add Recipients tab.
You can either Add Users, from the list of those you’ve already added to the site, or Add By Email, for anyone at all. Remember to Save Changes.
Adding recipients to get scan reports via email is fast and easy.
You can deactivate the scheduled scan or change the sending schedule, as well as who it goes to, at any time.
Search
To easily locate your URLs, search results can be filtered from within The Hub.
From the summary screen, you can use the dropdowns to filter by Status or Domain.
Use the built-in filters to locate items more easily in your Broken URL list.
Export Lists
You can export your broken URL lists anytime in CSV format.
To do this, simply click the Export as CSV button from the summary screen in The Hub.
And … that’s it! You’re now a BLC pro.
Keep your site’s links healthy with the best free broken link checker tool for WordPress.
“I love this! Offsetting the resources to the cloud will help so many sites!” PTaubman, WPMU DEV Member
“But I’m happy with Local BLC and I don’t run multiple sites…”
If you want to keep using the older plugin, you don’t have to switch to Cloud Link Checker. Local BLC will keep working just fine and you can easily switch to the cloud version at any time inside your WordPress admin.
You can switch between cloud and local link checker inside the WordPress admin.
Just keep in mind that you can only activate one engine at a time, so if the Cloud engine is running, Local Link Checker will be inactive and vice-versa.
Switch link checker engines inside your WordPress dashboard.
Note: if you run a multisite installation, BLC cloud version will only be available on the main site when network-activated. Due to the complexity of scanning multisite, subsites will continue to use the BLC Local version.
Cloud Link Checker – Perfect For Agencies
Being able to manage all of your sites from one place (The Hub) and send clients white labeled reports makes Cloud Link Checker the perfect solution for agencies, freelancers, and anyone running multiple WordPress sites.
Clients will love you even more when they see you’ve taken care of their broken links.
You can also use the tool with a customized report as a way to generate new clients for your agency and upsell WordPress maintenance services to existing clients.
Use BLC with whitelabel reports to generate new clients and upsell maintenance services.
Compare our plugin with other broken link checking tools and you will quickly see why WPMU DEV’s cloud-based link checker is a no-brainer.
For example, here’s one of our competitors’ offering:
Free version limitations:
Only one website allowed.
Only 200 links checked per month.
Only internal links are checked.
Links are checked once every 3 days.
Cost: $30/month (credit card required to sign up).
Whereas, with WPMU DEV’s Cloud Link Checker…
No limitations:
Unlimited number of websites.
Unlimited number of links.
Internal and External links are checked (Local and Cloud versions).
Set your own schedule (Local and Cloud versions).
Manually check all your sites anytime.
Cost: Free (priority support included for members only).
No credit card required to sign up.
To get the full picture of what our broken links checker can do, see the plugin documentation.
Now that we’ve shared the good news with you about a powerful WordPress troubleshooting tool every web developer (and user) should have in their site management toolbox, let’s take a closer look at the harm broken links can cause if left unchecked and why you need a tool like Broken Link Checker.
How Broken Links Affect SEO
High-quality, relevant, and authoritative links are crucial to a website’s SEO and reputation. Broken links can have several negative impacts on search engine optimization, including:
1. Crawling and Indexing Issues: Search engine crawlers follow links to discover and index web pages. In fact, Google cites good working links as a best practice. When a crawler encounters a broken link, it cannot access the linked page and may struggle to navigate through your website effectively. This can prevent certain pages from being indexed, making them invisible to search engines and reducing their chances of appearing in search results.
2. Increased Bounce Rates: Bounce rate measure how long users spend time on a particular web page before “bouncing” to another one. Visitors who stumble upon broken links may abandon a site altogether. When visitors repeatedly choose to leave a web page almost immediately after landing on it, this leads to a high bounce rate, which sends a “low-quality” signal to search engines about the site.
3. Decreased Search Engine Rankings: Search engines aim to deliver the best user experience by providing relevant and high-quality search results. Websites with broken links may be considered less reliable and valuable by search engines, leading to lower rankings in search results. This can result in reduced organic traffic and visibility for your website.
4. Impact on Internal Link Structure: Broken links disrupt the internal link structure of your website. Internal linking helps search engines understand the relationships between different pages and establishes a hierarchy of importance. When broken links exist within this structure, it can confuse search engines and weaken the overall SEO structure of your website.
5. Lost Backlink Opportunities: Backlinks are an important factor in SEO, as they indicate the authority and relevance of your website. If other websites link to broken pages on your site, it can negatively impact your backlink profile. Broken links may deter other webmasters from linking to your site, reducing your chances of acquiring valuable backlinks.
To mitigate the negative impact of broken links on SEO, it is crucial to regularly monitor and fix them. Conducting regular website audits, using tools to identify broken links like BLC, and implementing redirects or updating links can help improve user experience, maintain search engine rankings, and enhance the overall SEO performance of your website.
Broken Links Can Also Harm Your Business
In addition to impacting your site’s SEO, broken links can also cause serious damage to your business and its reputation. This includes:
1. Poor User Experience: Studies show that 89% of consumers will shop with a competitor after having a poor user experience on a site. Broken links create a negative user experience by leading visitors to dead-end pages or error messages. Users expect links to provide relevant information or resources, and encountering broken links can be frustrating. This can decrease user engagement, increase bounce rates, and ultimately harm your website’s reputation.
2. Negative Impact on Revenue: Broken links can sometimes cause roadblocks in your sales conversion process. Investing money and time into marketing efforts to get potential customers to your site then losing sales because they cannot reach conversion pages means wasted time and lost revenue.
3. Security Vulnerabilities: Broken links can also lead to malicious attacks on your site, phishing scams, and broken links hijacking (see below)
What is Broken Links Hijacking (BLH)?
Broken Links Hijacking (BLH) refers to the practice of exploiting expired, unlinked, or inactive external links found within a webpage.
It involves malicious actors taking advantage of resources or third-party services that are no longer available or valid, such as due to expired domains. These attackers can seize control of these links to carry out various harmful activities, including defacement through acquiring expired domains, impersonation, or even cross-site scripting.
Attack Scenario and Security Risks
Let’s imagine a scenario where a business shuts down or forgets to create a social media page but still has the link to that page on its website. In this case, an attacker can simply create an account using the same name and then proceed to post offensive content or launch phishing attacks while pretending to be the business.
Illustrative Scenario
To illustrate this further, let’s consider a website called thewebsite.com that mentions a LinkedIn page URL but hasn’t actually created the page yet. As a result, when users try to visit the LinkedIn page using the URL (e.g., https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-website/), they encounter a “404 page not found” error.
Exploiting this situation, an attacker creates a fake LinkedIn page and customizes the URL to resemble “the-website.” Consequently, when a regular user accesses the company’s LinkedIn page through the URL, they unknowingly get redirected to the attacker’s controlled LinkedIn page.
What Causes Broken Links?
There are several factors that can lead to broken links. Some of the most common causes include:
1. Typo: Mistakes made when writing the link can result in broken links. This could be a simple error in typing or copy-pasting the URL incorrectly.
2. Deleted Pages: When a page is deleted from a website, any links pointing to that page will become broken. This can happen when content is removed or when a website undergoes restructuring.
3. Renamed Pages: If URLs are changed or pages are renamed without implementing proper redirects, the old links pointing to those pages will no longer work and lead to broken links.
4. Domain Name Change: When a website changes its domain name, any links pointing to the old domain will become broken unless appropriate redirects are in place.
Best Practices to Fix Broken Links
To fix broken links, it is important to follow these best practices:
1. Check Links with a Broken Link Checker (BLC): Use a reliable tool to identify broken links on your website. This will provide you with a list of broken links that need to be addressed.
2. Prioritize High Authority Pages: Start by addressing broken links on pages with high authority or those that receive significant traffic. Fixing these links will have a greater impact on your website’s overall performance.
3. Redirect to Relevant URLs: If a page has been deleted or its URL has changed, set up proper redirects (such as 301 redirects) to automatically send visitors to the relevant new URL. This ensures a seamless user experience and avoids 404 error pages.
Steps to Avoid and Fix 404 Pages
To prevent and resolve 404 pages (page not found errors), consider the following steps:
1. Preserve and Update Content: Instead of deleting pages outright, consider updating or refreshing the content. This helps avoid unnecessary 404 pages caused by removing content that other pages have linked to.
2. Implement 301 or 302 Redirects: If a page’s content still exists but its location or URL structure has changed, use 301 or 302 redirects to redirect visitors to the new page. This ensures they can still access the desired content without encountering a 404 error.
3. Reach Out to Webmasters for Updated Links: If a 404 error occurs due to an external website incorrectly linking to your content, you can try contacting the website’s author or web administrator. Requesting an update to the erroneous link can help resolve the issue, or alternatively, suggest changing the link altogether.
Fixing Broken Links: Manual vs Automated Methods
Fixing broken links has long been considered an essential practice among SEO practitioners. Broken links should be fixed quickly.
Google understands that broken links are a natural happening. However, SEOs know that taking time to correct these issues can significantly impact the site’s performance in search engines.
For these reasons and more, it’s clearly important to keep tabs on all of your site links. A small site with minimal content can easily handle checking for broken links manually. However, the more content your site has, the more difficult it becomes to conduct manual scans of your links.
Fixing broken links manually on a website and using automated methods each have their own benefits:
Benefits of Using Manual Methods to Fix Broken Links
1. Accuracy: When fixing broken links manually, you have full control and can ensure that each link is checked and corrected accurately. This allows for a more precise and tailored approach to resolving broken links.
2. Customization: Manual fixing allows you to review each broken link individually and determine the best course of action. You can update the URL, remove the link, or find alternative resources as needed.
3. Quality control: By manually fixing broken links, you can ensure that the replacement URLs are relevant, trustworthy, and provide value to your users. It allows for a more thorough evaluation of the content being linked to.
4. User experience: Manually fixing broken links allows you to consider the user experience in the process. You can choose appropriate anchor text, update navigation menus, and ensure a seamless browsing experience for your visitors.
5. Content review: While fixing broken links manually, you can review the content surrounding the broken links. This presents an opportunity to update outdated information, improve the overall quality of the content, and enhance the SEO performance of the page.
Benefits of Using Automated Methods to Fix Broken Links
1. Time-saving: Automated tools can scan your website and identify broken links quickly, saving you time and effort compared to manually checking each link individually.
2. Efficiency: With automated methods, you can fix broken links in bulk rather than addressing them one by one. This can be especially useful for large websites with a high volume of broken links.
3. Scalability: Automated tools can handle the detection and fixing of broken links on websites of any size. They can efficiently process a large number of links, ensuring comprehensive coverage.
4. Regular monitoring: Automated methods allow for regular and scheduled scans of your website, ensuring that new broken links are promptly identified and addressed.
5. Consistency: Using automated tools ensures a consistent approach to fixing broken links across your entire website. This helps maintain a unified user experience and prevents oversight of any broken links.
The choice between using manual and automated methods depends on your specific needs, resources, and preferences. The good news is, all of the risks associated with bad links are easily avoided if you make sure they are kept in proper working order.
Even better, is using a quality, automated dead link checker tool like Broken Link Checker removes the tedious and time consuming task of manually tracking and manging your broken links.
Take Link Maintenance to the Next Level with WPMU DEV’s BLC
Over 700,000 WordPress users depend on Broken Link Checker to keep their sites free of errors and performance issues caused by outdated and non-working URLs.
Our new cloud-based plugin version offers even more incredible value — enhanced speeds, no PHP/DB errors, ability to schedule scans and send email reports (including white labeled), plus the ease of managing unlimited sites from one central Hub – all while still (and always) remaining free.
Don’t let your site’s SEO and user experience take an unnecessary hit. Especially when a practical solution is directly within your reach.
Connect, scan, schedule, and fix broken links quickly and easily and keep your sites running optimally with the new Cloud-based Link Checker. Get it for free or as a WPMU DEV member.
WPMU DEV’s free all-new and improved Broken Link Checker plugin saves you the time and tedious hassle of handling crucial link management tasks across all your WordPress sites.
“I have been looking to find an easier way to check for broken links. Thank you for making this tool so accessible.” Dena, WPMU DEV Member
Broken links are a negative indicator of site health and can have a major impact on your PageRank and your reputation. Staying on top of your site links is an essential and crucial aspect of good WordPress site management.
But… manually checking your content for broken links is time-consuming and tedious excruciating, especially if you manage multiple WordPress sites.
“This is potentially going to save a ton of time! Before now I’ve always done a manual check on all sites I create.” TNT Systems, WPMU DEV Member
This article shows you how to use our powerful link checking tool on unlimited WordPress sites – completely re-engineered with a top user-requested feature and a new API that works 20x faster, to deliver better and more accurate results, prevent negative SEO performance issues, and improve user experience.
We also include a comprehensive guide covering all you need to know about why link management is important and how to effectively manage broken links on all of your sites.
Let’s jump right in and take a look at the only tool you’ll ever need to check and repair broken links on unlimited WordPress sites.
WordPress Broken Link Checker (BLC) Plugin
Broken Link Checker is now even better and faster at finding broken links on WordPress sites.
WPMU DEV acquired Broken Link Checker many years back from ManageWP, and since then have implemented many tweaks and fixes to improve its capabilities, growing its popularity to 700K downloads and its user satisfaction to 4/5 stars.
[NB: Special shoutout to Patrick Walker, Team Lead at WP Engine’s Customer Experience Operations Team for his hard work in collaboration with our engineers to get our plugin removed from WP Engine’s and Flywheel’s block list.]
While we plan to continue maintaining and improving the old plugin version for the thousands of users who are still currently using it, starting from versions 2.0 and onward, we’ve also introduced a new cloud-based link checking plugin for WordPress.
Note: We’ll focus the rest of this article on our Cloud Link Checker. For more information on using the old (Local) BLC plugin, visit the plugin download page on WordPress.org.
Why Two Different Link Checking Engines?
The old Broken Link Checker plugin (we now call this version Local Link Checker) is a great tool currently used and loved by thousands of WordPress users to keep their URLs healthy.
If you love it, feel free to keep using it. Keep in mind, however, that it depends on your site’s resources to run scans, which can be affected by your hosting plan’s available resources, and, depending on what plugins are installed on your site, could cause conflicts or WP/PHP errors.
Our latest innovation — a cloud-based plugin — takes things to a whole new level and opens the door to an entirely new scope of possibilities that we couldn’t achieve before by integrating the best of the Local BLC plugin with cloud capabilities directly into The Hub (our all-in-one WordPress platform), all at no additional cost to users.
For example, some of the benefits of the new cloud-based BLC include:
Scalability: Cloud Link Checker runs on WPMU DEV’s engines not the individual site where the plugin is installed, so you can run broken link scans on sites of any size and server type.
Blazing Fast Scans: Being cloud-based means any dependencies on the performance of your server are eliminated, giving your scans a massive speed increase.
No Risk of Blocklisting: Pinging external sites repeatedly from your website raises suspicious flags with internet service providers and puts your site at risk of being blocklisted. Cloud BLC doesn’t use your site’s IP address, so there’s no risk of your site(s) being blocklisted.
Faster Updates and Instant Improvements: No more waiting for plugin version releases or worrying whether you site’s resources can handle the changes. We test, fix, and improve everything on the cloud and your site benefits instantly as soon as we deploy the changes and improvements to our engine..
Eliminate WordPress and PHP Errors: Our cloud-based link checker doesn’t run on your site’s resources, so you won’t experience site resource errors using the plugin.
Crawl Everything: Cloud Link Checker follows the same logic as search engine crawlers, so no URLs are missed on all standard pages and posts, menus, category pages, etc. Even better, use scheduled reports to discover broken links before the search engines see them.
WPMU DEV’s Cloud-based Link Checker provides better performance and faster speed.
Cloud BLC scans your site from top to bottom, monitoring external and internal links in your posts, pages, comments, blogroll – even custom fields.
It detects links that don’t work, as well as missing images and redirects. It will then notify you via the Broken Link Checker section of the Hub, or you can view a summary of the results in the plugin dashboard of your WordPress site.
“Love this new tool, especially since it runs off-site and doesn’t hog server resources.” Levi, WPMU DEV Member
Set Up
Whether you’re an existing Broken Link Checker plugin user or new to the tool, setup is a breeze.
You can set up the plugin from the WordPress dashboard plugin and from WPMU DEV’s Hub.
Let’s look at both methods.
From the WordPress Dashboard
Cloud Link Checker activation in the WordPress dashboard.
Install and activate the plugin.
Go to the Link Checker menu and select Cloud.
If you’re logged into WPMU DEV, click ‘Enable Cloud Engine’ (otherwise, the button will say ‘Connect to WPMU DEV’), and you’ll be taken through The Free Hub onboarding process, as well as the broken links checking tool component. This will lead you directly to the BLC service tab in The Free Hub.
From here, run a new scan. You’ll get a notification once the scan completes, so feel free to look around The Free Hub while you wait.
Once you receive notification that the scan is complete, you can view the results in the Broken Link Checker section of The Free Hub.
From The Hub
Broken Link Checker activation in The Hub.
After logging into The Hub, you’ll see Broken Link Checker listed as a new service in the menu (top & sidebar).
Activate this to install the plugin on the site.
Run a scan to see your results.
However you choose to install the Cloud Link Checker, the WordPress dashboard will display the Summary Report, while The Hub will have the Full Report – including the list of broken and dead links.
Scan results in the WordPress dashboard.
Click View Full Report to see the full scan report in The Hub.
The Hub displays a detailed list of your broken URLs after scanning.
Aside from locating your broken links, missing images, and redirects, the plugin has additional functions that let you schedule scans, send reports by email, search (with built-in filters), and export your lists for download.
Edit/Unlink Broken Links
Our members spoke…and we listened!
One of the most requested features for this tool was the ability to edit and unlink broken links.
We’re thrilled to announce that in addition to ignoring and reporting links as not broken, you can now also easily edit and unlink broken links from The Hub.
Simply click on the vertical ellipsis (3 dots) to the right of any link listed in the Hub’s scan report and select one of the available options.
Edit, Unlink, Ignore, or Report links as Not Broken.
Select Edit Link to point the link to a new URL, Unlink to remove the link and change it to plain text, or select one of the other options to ignore the link or to report false positives (note: we use Not Broken reports to improve BLC’s engine).
Note: New scans are temporarily disabled while the system is performing editing or unlinking operations. You can run a new scan after these processes have completed.
Also, to keep reports manageable, if the scan detects multiple instances of the same broken link URL, the report only displays the first 10 instances and notifies you how many other instances there are.
Scan reports are kept manageable by displaying only the first 10 URLs for the same broken link.
You can choose to edit or unlink only the first 10 visible links, or perform the operation on all instances of that same link.
Edit (or unlink) only the first 10 links or all links.
Note that the tool does not scan hardcoded links written in php files (eg template files, shortcodes, etc.).
Run Manual Scans
You can run a manual scan any time, in both the WordPress dashboard and The Hub. Just hit the blue Run Scan button. This can be helpful if you’ve done some clean up, and want to refresh your view of the list.
Schedule Scans & Send Reports by Email
Scheduling scans is done from the Broken Link Checker plugin section in the WordPress dashboard.
Schedule new scans for broken link checks in your WordPress dashboard.
At least one recipient must be added to schedule reports, so that it can be sent to a party via email.
Click on the cog icon to see the menu options for scanning.
From the Schedule Scan section, click Configure.
Check that you are on the Schedule Date tab from the top menu.
Choose the Frequency, from Daily, Weekly, Monthly.
Select desired time, day, or date from the dropdown options; then click Save.
The plugin provides many options for scheduling scans.
Now we will add recipients (at least one), so the report has a destination to be sent to:
Click on the Add Recipients tab.
You can either Add Users, from the list of those you’ve already added to the site, or Add By Email, for anyone at all. Remember to Save Changes.
Adding recipients to get scan reports via email is fast and easy.
You can deactivate the scheduled scan or change the sending schedule, as well as who it goes to, at any time.
Search
To easily locate your URLs, search results can be filtered from within The Hub.
From the summary screen, you can use the dropdowns to filter by Status or Domain.
Use the built-in filters to locate items more easily in your Broken URL list.
Export Lists
You can export your broken URL lists anytime in CSV format.
To do this, simply click the Export as CSV button from the summary screen in The Hub.
And … that’s it! You’re now a BLC pro.
Keep your site’s links healthy with the best free broken link checker tool for WordPress.
“I love this! Offsetting the resources to the cloud will help so many sites!” PTaubman, WPMU DEV Member
“But I’m happy with Local BLC and I don’t run multiple sites…”
If you want to keep using the older plugin, you don’t have to switch to Cloud Link Checker. Local BLC will keep working just fine and you can easily switch to the cloud version at any time inside your WordPress admin.
You can switch between cloud and local link checker inside the WordPress admin.
Just keep in mind that you can only activate one engine at a time, so if the Cloud engine is running, Local Link Checker will be inactive and vice-versa.
Switch link checker engines inside your WordPress dashboard.
Note: if you run a multisite installation, BLC cloud version will only be available on the main site when network-activated. Due to the complexity of scanning multisite, subsites will continue to use the BLC Local version.
Cloud Link Checker – Perfect For Agencies
Being able to manage all of your sites from one place (The Hub) and send clients white labeled reports makes Cloud Link Checker the perfect solution for agencies, freelancers, and anyone running multiple WordPress sites.
Clients will love you even more when they see you’ve taken care of their broken links.
You can also use the tool with a customized report as a way to generate new clients for your agency and upsell WordPress maintenance services to existing clients.
Use BLC with whitelabel reports to generate new clients and upsell maintenance services.
Compare our plugin with other broken link checking tools and you will quickly see why WPMU DEV’s cloud-based link checker is a no-brainer.
For example, here’s one of our competitors’ offering:
Free version limitations:
Only one website allowed.
Only 200 links checked per month.
Only internal links are checked.
Links are checked once every 3 days.
Cost: $30/month (credit card required to sign up).
Whereas, with WPMU DEV’s Cloud Link Checker…
No limitations:
Unlimited number of websites.
Unlimited number of links.
Internal and External links are checked (Local and Cloud versions).
Set your own schedule (Local and Cloud versions).
Manually check all your sites anytime.
Cost: Free (priority support included for members only).
No credit card required to sign up.
To get the full picture of what our broken links checker can do, see the plugin documentation.
Now that we’ve shared the good news with you about a powerful WordPress troubleshooting tool every web developer (and user) should have in their site management toolbox, let’s take a closer look at the harm broken links can cause if left unchecked and why you need a tool like Broken Link Checker.
How Broken Links Affect SEO
High-quality, relevant, and authoritative links are crucial to a website’s SEO and reputation. Broken links can have several negative impacts on search engine optimization, including:
1. Crawling and Indexing Issues: Search engine crawlers follow links to discover and index web pages. In fact, Google cites good working links as a best practice. When a crawler encounters a broken link, it cannot access the linked page and may struggle to navigate through your website effectively. This can prevent certain pages from being indexed, making them invisible to search engines and reducing their chances of appearing in search results.
2. Increased Bounce Rates: Bounce rate measure how long users spend time on a particular web page before “bouncing” to another one. Visitors who stumble upon broken links may abandon a site altogether. When visitors repeatedly choose to leave a web page almost immediately after landing on it, this leads to a high bounce rate, which sends a “low-quality” signal to search engines about the site.
3. Decreased Search Engine Rankings: Search engines aim to deliver the best user experience by providing relevant and high-quality search results. Websites with broken links may be considered less reliable and valuable by search engines, leading to lower rankings in search results. This can result in reduced organic traffic and visibility for your website.
4. Impact on Internal Link Structure: Broken links disrupt the internal link structure of your website. Internal linking helps search engines understand the relationships between different pages and establishes a hierarchy of importance. When broken links exist within this structure, it can confuse search engines and weaken the overall SEO structure of your website.
5. Lost Backlink Opportunities: Backlinks are an important factor in SEO, as they indicate the authority and relevance of your website. If other websites link to broken pages on your site, it can negatively impact your backlink profile. Broken links may deter other webmasters from linking to your site, reducing your chances of acquiring valuable backlinks.
To mitigate the negative impact of broken links on SEO, it is crucial to regularly monitor and fix them. Conducting regular website audits, using tools to identify broken links like BLC, and implementing redirects or updating links can help improve user experience, maintain search engine rankings, and enhance the overall SEO performance of your website.
Broken Links Can Also Harm Your Business
In addition to impacting your site’s SEO, broken links can also cause serious damage to your business and its reputation. This includes:
1. Poor User Experience: Studies show that 89% of consumers will shop with a competitor after having a poor user experience on a site. Broken links create a negative user experience by leading visitors to dead-end pages or error messages. Users expect links to provide relevant information or resources, and encountering broken links can be frustrating. This can decrease user engagement, increase bounce rates, and ultimately harm your website’s reputation.
2. Negative Impact on Revenue: Broken links can sometimes cause roadblocks in your sales conversion process. Investing money and time into marketing efforts to get potential customers to your site then losing sales because they cannot reach conversion pages means wasted time and lost revenue.
3. Security Vulnerabilities: Broken links can also lead to malicious attacks on your site, phishing scams, and broken links hijacking (see below)
What is Broken Links Hijacking (BLH)?
Broken Links Hijacking (BLH) refers to the practice of exploiting expired, unlinked, or inactive external links found within a webpage.
It involves malicious actors taking advantage of resources or third-party services that are no longer available or valid, such as due to expired domains. These attackers can seize control of these links to carry out various harmful activities, including defacement through acquiring expired domains, impersonation, or even cross-site scripting.
Attack Scenario and Security Risks
Let’s imagine a scenario where a business shuts down or forgets to create a social media page but still has the link to that page on its website. In this case, an attacker can simply create an account using the same name and then proceed to post offensive content or launch phishing attacks while pretending to be the business.
Illustrative Scenario
To illustrate this further, let’s consider a website called thewebsite.com that mentions a LinkedIn page URL but hasn’t actually created the page yet. As a result, when users try to visit the LinkedIn page using the URL (e.g., https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-website/), they encounter a “404 page not found” error.
Exploiting this situation, an attacker creates a fake LinkedIn page and customizes the URL to resemble “the-website.” Consequently, when a regular user accesses the company’s LinkedIn page through the URL, they unknowingly get redirected to the attacker’s controlled LinkedIn page.
What Causes Broken Links?
There are several factors that can lead to broken links. Some of the most common causes include:
1. Typo: Mistakes made when writing the link can result in broken links. This could be a simple error in typing or copy-pasting the URL incorrectly.
2. Deleted Pages: When a page is deleted from a website, any links pointing to that page will become broken. This can happen when content is removed or when a website undergoes restructuring.
3. Renamed Pages: If URLs are changed or pages are renamed without implementing proper redirects, the old links pointing to those pages will no longer work and lead to broken links.
4. Domain Name Change: When a website changes its domain name, any links pointing to the old domain will become broken unless appropriate redirects are in place.
Best Practices to Fix Broken Links
To fix broken links, it is important to follow these best practices:
1. Check Links with a Broken Link Checker (BLC): Use a reliable tool to identify broken links on your website. This will provide you with a list of broken links that need to be addressed.
2. Prioritize High Authority Pages: Start by addressing broken links on pages with high authority or those that receive significant traffic. Fixing these links will have a greater impact on your website’s overall performance.
3. Redirect to Relevant URLs: If a page has been deleted or its URL has changed, set up proper redirects (such as 301 redirects) to automatically send visitors to the relevant new URL. This ensures a seamless user experience and avoids 404 error pages.
Steps to Avoid and Fix 404 Pages
To prevent and resolve 404 pages (page not found errors), consider the following steps:
1. Preserve and Update Content: Instead of deleting pages outright, consider updating or refreshing the content. This helps avoid unnecessary 404 pages caused by removing content that other pages have linked to.
2. Implement 301 or 302 Redirects: If a page’s content still exists but its location or URL structure has changed, use 301 or 302 redirects to redirect visitors to the new page. This ensures they can still access the desired content without encountering a 404 error.
3. Reach Out to Webmasters for Updated Links: If a 404 error occurs due to an external website incorrectly linking to your content, you can try contacting the website’s author or web administrator. Requesting an update to the erroneous link can help resolve the issue, or alternatively, suggest changing the link altogether.
Fixing Broken Links: Manual vs Automated Methods
Fixing broken links has long been considered an essential practice among SEO practitioners. Broken links should be fixed quickly.
Google understands that broken links are a natural happening. However, SEOs know that taking time to correct these issues can significantly impact the site’s performance in search engines.
For these reasons and more, it’s clearly important to keep tabs on all of your site links. A small site with minimal content can easily handle checking for broken links manually. However, the more content your site has, the more difficult it becomes to conduct manual scans of your links.
Fixing broken links manually on a website and using automated methods each have their own benefits:
Benefits of Using Manual Methods to Fix Broken Links
1. Accuracy: When fixing broken links manually, you have full control and can ensure that each link is checked and corrected accurately. This allows for a more precise and tailored approach to resolving broken links.
2. Customization: Manual fixing allows you to review each broken link individually and determine the best course of action. You can update the URL, remove the link, or find alternative resources as needed.
3. Quality control: By manually fixing broken links, you can ensure that the replacement URLs are relevant, trustworthy, and provide value to your users. It allows for a more thorough evaluation of the content being linked to.
4. User experience: Manually fixing broken links allows you to consider the user experience in the process. You can choose appropriate anchor text, update navigation menus, and ensure a seamless browsing experience for your visitors.
5. Content review: While fixing broken links manually, you can review the content surrounding the broken links. This presents an opportunity to update outdated information, improve the overall quality of the content, and enhance the SEO performance of the page.
Benefits of Using Automated Methods to Fix Broken Links
1. Time-saving: Automated tools can scan your website and identify broken links quickly, saving you time and effort compared to manually checking each link individually.
2. Efficiency: With automated methods, you can fix broken links in bulk rather than addressing them one by one. This can be especially useful for large websites with a high volume of broken links.
3. Scalability: Automated tools can handle the detection and fixing of broken links on websites of any size. They can efficiently process a large number of links, ensuring comprehensive coverage.
4. Regular monitoring: Automated methods allow for regular and scheduled scans of your website, ensuring that new broken links are promptly identified and addressed.
5. Consistency: Using automated tools ensures a consistent approach to fixing broken links across your entire website. This helps maintain a unified user experience and prevents oversight of any broken links.
The choice between using manual and automated methods depends on your specific needs, resources, and preferences. The good news is, all of the risks associated with bad links are easily avoided if you make sure they are kept in proper working order.
Even better, is using a quality, automated dead link checker tool like Broken Link Checker removes the tedious and time consuming task of manually tracking and manging your broken links.
Take Link Maintenance to the Next Level with WPMU DEV’s BLC
Over 700,000 WordPress users depend on Broken Link Checker to keep their sites free of errors and performance issues caused by outdated and non-working URLs.
Our new cloud-based plugin version offers even more incredible value — enhanced speeds, no PHP/DB errors, ability to schedule scans and send email reports (including white labeled), plus the ease of managing unlimited sites from one central Hub – all while still (and always) remaining free.
Don’t let your site’s SEO and user experience take an unnecessary hit. Especially when a practical solution is directly within your reach.
Connect, scan, schedule, and fix broken links quickly and easily and keep your sites running optimally with the new Cloud-based Link Checker. Get it for free or as a WPMU DEV member.
How did WPMU DEV compare against other WordPress leaders in the areas of Managed Hosting, Web Hosting, and WordPress Site Management for the Spring 2023 quarter?
Managed Hosting user satisfaction rankings (Spring 2023)
Summary
WPMU DEV, along with Kinsta, tops 3 of the 5 G2 user satisfaction categories shown above, including an amazing 99% for Quality of Support, which we’re pretty chuffed about.
Web Hosting overall grid rankings (Spring 2023)Web Hosting user satisfaction rankings (Spring 2023)
Summary
WPMU DEV and Kinsta each ranked highest for the various G2 user satisfaction categories shown above. Notably, WPMU DEV topped Quality of Support here with another 99%Â score.
WordPress Site Management overall grid rankings (Spring 2023)WordPress Site Management user satisfaction rankings (Spring 2023)
Summary
WPMU DEV is the clear winner in all of G2’s WordPress Site Management categories shown above. Not much more to say, other than to brush the non-existent dust off our shoulders.
We take our members’ feedback and suggestions seriously and we provide 24×7 expert support to deal with any issues you may experience.
If you are unhappy with any aspect of our services or have suggestions for improvement, please tell us. And if you are delighted, please leave a review.
To see how our performance stacks up against other WordPress leaders, go here: How We Compare
To see what new and exciting WPMU DEV developments are coming up next, check out our roadmap.
Not a WPMU DEV member yet? Then experience our award-winning services and become a member today…it’s 100% risk-free!
You may already know that WordPress lets you schedule posts to publish at a later date, but did you know that you can also schedule posts to automatically unpublish after a set time period?
In a previous article, we looked at the best post scheduling plugins for WordPress. Depending on the nature of your content, however, you may also want posts to automatically unpublish after having served their purpose.
In this article, we look at practical ways to use expiring posts in WordPress and plugins that will help you automate this.
Here are 21 ways to improve your content and marketing strategy using expiring posts in WordPress:
1. Time-Sensitive Promotions
If you run time-limited sales announcements, promotions, offers, or contests on your website, scheduling expiring posts lets you automatically remove or update those posts once the promotional period has ended.
Scheduling posts to automatically expire at the end of a promotional campaign ensures that visitors and customers are not presented with outdated offers or information, preventing confusion and avoiding disappointment, and helps to maintain your brand’s credibility.
For example, let’s say you have a retail store or an eCommerce website and are planning to run a week-long flash sale on selected items. You could create a series of posts promoting different products and schedule them to automatically expire at the end of the sale period, ensuring that customers only see your active promotions.
2. Seasonal Updates
Scheduling expiring posts can be really useful if your business has seasonal products, services, or events.
Automatically expiring posts that contain seasonal content, such as holiday greetings, seasonal sales, or event announcements (e.g. festivals, growers markets, etc.) helps to keep your website’s content aligned with the current season and relevant throughout the year, and avoids showcasing outdated products or information.
This is not only useful for businesses that offer seasonal products or services, such as gardening supplies or holiday-specific decorations, but also seasonal offers or services.
For example, if you have a holiday-specific campaign, you can schedule the corresponding posts to expire once the holiday is over, saving you the effort of manually having to remove or update content every season.
Or, let’s say your client runs a travel agency and wants to showcase different holiday destinations throughout the year (or promote destinations that match discounted airfares from different airlines). They could create posts highlighting specific locations and set them to automatically expire once the corresponding season ends, keeping their website content aligned with the current season.
3. Event Management
Setting expiration dates for event-related posts ensures that outdated event details are automatically removed, maintaining accurate and up-to-date information for attendees.
For example, if your company organizes events, you can schedule posts to expire after the event has taken place. This helps manage event-specific content, such as registration details, agenda updates, or speaker information, and ensures that your website stays relevant before and after the event.
Similarly, if your business organizes conferences, you could create posts promoting each session and speaker and then schedule these to expire after the session has taken place, ensuring that outdated session details are automatically removed.
4. Limited-Time Offers
Promoting exclusive deals or discounts by scheduling posts to expire when the offer period ends creates a sense of urgency for visitors and encourages customers to make timely purchases.
This is ideal for online retailers planning to launch a one-day or weekend sale with posts featuring discounted products.
By scheduling posts to automatically publish when the event kicks off and then setting the posts to expire at the end of the sale, they would not only create a sense of urgency but automate the entire process so they wouldn’t even have to monitor it (think of all those limited-time sales that end at midnight…you could be sleeping and still be making money!)
5. News and Updates
When you have important announcements or releases that need to be shared at a specific time, such as product launches, press releases, or scheduled events, scheduling expiring posts ensures that the information becomes available and expires automatically according to your desired schedule.
Scheduling your news articles, press releases, or industry updates posts to automatically expire when the information loses its relevance or becomes outdated after a certain period helps to keep your website current, maintains a current and accurate representation of the news landscape, and ensures that readers are always presented with the latest news stories.
6. Product Launches
Scheduling posts to expire after a product launch prevents outdated information about previous releases from cluttering your website.
If you are a technology company planning to release a new version of its software, foir example, you could create a series of posts providing information and updates about the upcoming release, then schedule these to expire shortly after the launch to prevent users from accessing outdated software details.
7. Temporary Notices or Alerts
Displaying time-sensitive notices or alerts, such as maintenance notifications or temporary closures, that automatically expire once the issue or event has passed, ensures that visitors no longer see the closure notice.
For example, a small business could display a notice on its website about a temporary closure due to personal reasons (e.g. owners travelling overseas or a death of a key business team member), and schedule the post to expire once the business reopens.
8. Membership or Subscription Expiration
Automatically expiring posts that are accessible only to members or subscribers after their membership or subscription period ends, encourages them to renew or upgrade.
A good example of this is where a membership-based website grants access to premium content for a specific subscription period and sets users’ access to posts and resources to automatically expire at the end of their subscription.
9. Course or Lesson Availability
Controlling access to course or lesson content by scheduling posts to expire based on the duration of the course or availability of the material encourages students to progress through the course within a designated timeframe.
For example, an online learning platform could provide access to course materials for a limited duration with each lesson post scheduled to expire after a certain number of days.
10. Contest or Giveaway End Dates
Setting posts to expire when a contest or giveaway ends ensures that the information remains accurate and helps to avoid confusion for participants.
A practical use of this could be where a social media influencer runs a giveaway and promotes it through posts on their website. The posts are then scheduled to expire at the end of the giveaway, ensuring that participants can no longer enter after the specified deadline.
11. Archiving Outdated Content
Automatically expiring and archiving posts that are no longer relevant or useful keeps your website clutter-free and ensures a better user experience.
For example, suppose your company blog features posts about past product releases. As new products are launched, the corresponding posts are then scheduled to expire and automatically move to an archive section, keeping the main blog focused on current offerings.
12. Regulatory Compliance
If you need to comply with specific regulations regarding the removal or expiration of certain types of content, scheduling posts to expire can help you meet those requirements.
An example of where setting posts to expire once a required duration has passed to ensure compliance with regulations would be where a financial-related institution publishes posts with legal disclaimers that must be displayed for a specific time period.
13. Legal Compliance
Similar to the above, you can automatically expire posts that contain time-limited legal disclaimers, privacy policies, terms of service, or cookie notices to ensure compliance with changing regulations.
For example, let’s say that an online service provider includes a cookie notice on their website. The post containing the notice can be scheduled to expire after the required consent duration, ensuring compliance with data privacy regulations.
14. Expiring Downloads or Resources
You can also schedule posts to expire when downloadable files, resources, or documents are no longer available or have been updated.
Scheduling posts related to older versions to expire once new updates are released ensures that users access only the most recent and relevant resources and prevents them from accessing outdated information.
15. Scheduled Content Updates
Plan ahead by scheduling posts to expire and automatically trigger updates or new content, ensuring a consistent publishing schedule and reducing manual intervention.
So, if you run a magazine-style website publishing articles on a weekly basis, you could schedule posts to automatically expire at the time of each new publication, allowing for seamless content updates without manual intervention.
16. A/B Testing
Using expiring posts to test different versions of content or design elements by setting expiration dates lets you compare performance and make data-driven decisions.
For example, suppose you run an e-commerce website and want to test two different versions of a product description. You could create two posts, each featuring a different description, and schedule them to expire after a set period. You can then analyze the metrics and determine which version performs better.
17. Content Rotation
Automatically cycling through a set of posts by scheduling them to expire and publishing new content allows you to create a dynamic and ever-changing website experience.
Suppose an art gallery website wants to showcase different artists. They could schedule posts featuring different artists’ works to automatically expire and publish new posts showcasing other artists, providing a constantly changing selection for visitors.
18. User Engagement
Encouraging regular visits to your website by regularly expiring and replacing content helps to entice users to return for fresh information and increased engagement.
An example of this would be where a lifestyle blog regularly features “Tip of the Week” posts. Each post is scheduled to automatically expire after a week, encouraging readers to return for fresh tips.
19. Content Freshness
By scheduling non-evergreen posts to expire, you ensure that your website or blog remains up-to-date with fresh content. This is particularly important if you publish time-sensitive information, such as news, promotions, or event announcements on a regular basis.
Once a post expires, it can automatically be removed or replaced with new content, keeping your website content fresh and relevant.
20. Content Cleanup
Schedule posts to expire and be removed from your website’s public view to maintain a clean and organized content repository.
For example, suppose your blog includes guest posts or paid posts that are only relevant for a limited time. You can schedule guest posts to expire and be removed from your website after the agreed-upon period, keeping your content repository well maintained, clean, and focused.
21. Editorial Workflow
Scheduling expiring posts allows you to plan your content publishing in advance. This can help streamline your content creation process and manage your editorial calendar more effectively.
By pre-scheduling expiration dates, you can focus on creating new content rather than constantly monitoring and manually updating old posts.
This is useful for businesses with news-like websites that follow an editorial calendar. They can schedule posts to expire according to the planned publication schedule, ensuring a steady flow of new content while seamlessly removing outdated articles from the website.
Why stay up all night to unpublish posts when you can set these to automatically expire?
Expiring Post Plugins for WordPress
Here are some post expiration plugins for WordPress you can use to publish a post for a limited time and have your posts be automatically unpublished after the period has expired:
PublishPress Future
PublishPress Future lets you automatically unpublish posts in WordPress.
PublishPress Future (formerly Post Expirator) is a simple and easy-to-use plugin that not only lets you automatically unpublish posts, pages, and other content types in WordPress, but also delete your post, change its status, update the post categories, or make other changes.
With PublishPress Future installed, you can:
Choose expiry dates for content in any post type.
Select expiry dates in the right sidebar when editing posts.
Modify, remove or completely delete content when the expiry date arrives.
Modify expiry dates using “Quick Edit†and “Bulk Editâ€.
Receive email notifications when your content expires.
Show expiry dates in your content, automatically or with shortcodes.
After installing and activating the plugin, you will see the plugin’s editor block (if using the Block Editor) or settings panel (Classic editor) when creating or editing a post, giving you flexibility and control over when your content will expire.
Simply enter the date and time that you want your post to expire using the intuitive interface…
Use the plugin’s editor block to set your post’s expiry date and time.
And choose what should happen to the post when it expires by selecting an option from the “Action To Run” section…
Choose what happens to your post after it expires.
You have various options for future actions on expired posts.
For example, you can:
Change the status to Draft, Private, or Trash.
Delete the post.
Keep all existing categories, and add new categories.
Remove all existing categories, and add new categories.
Keep all existing categories, except for those specified in this change.
Enable the “Stick to the top of the blog†option.
Disable the “Stick to the top of the blog†option.
Move the post to a custom status (Pro version)
PublishPress Future gives you complete control of scheduling and managing post expirations via its extensive settings panel. A Pro version of the plugin is available offering additional features and support.
The plugin puts you in complete control of your post expiration’s settings.
The PublishPress Future plugin includes the following additional features and functionalities:
Quick and Bulk Edit
Use the convenience of the plugin’s “Quick Edit” and “Bulk Edit” options to make changes to expiry dates. and manage a large number of posts.
Set posts to expire using the plugin’s convenient Quick Edit and Bulk Edit options.
Email Notifications
Receive notifications when your posts are due to expire so you can stay informed about your content’s expiry and never miss a critical update.
Display Expiry Dates in Your Content
PublishPress Future allows you to automatically show expiry or action dates within your articles. This feature adds a date stamp at the bottom of your post.
Display the post expiry status to provide transparency to your audience.
You can also use customizable shortcodes to display the expiration date inside your posts, tailoring the format to meet your specific needs.
Expiry Defaults for Post Types
The plugin not only lets you customize default expiry options for each post type within your WordPress site, but you can also configure default expiry settings for all of your content.
Automate your content scheduling even further by configuring default post expiry options.
Advanced Features & Detailed Logs
The Pro version of the plugin offers additional functionalities, such as moving posts to a custom status upon expiration and keeps a comprehensive log of all changes made to your posts.
Seamless Cron Job Integration
WP-CRON is a built-in feature of WordPress used to schedule recurring tasks, such as publishing scheduled posts or processing queued tasks in plugins.
PublishPress Future uses custom cron jobs to execute expiration events efficiently, reducing server overhead for busy websites. To fully leverage the plugin’s capabilities, make sure that WP-CRON is properly set up and functional on your web host.
Note:Â When using plugins that require WP-CRON, it’s essential to monitor the performance and resource usage of your site, as WP-CRON can consume significant resources when running heavy or frequent tasks.
If you notice performance issues, you may need to optimize the plugin settings, offload tasks to external services, or use a real server-side cron job to improve efficiency and prevent performance degradation on your hosting account.
For the best experience running plugins that require WP-CRON functionality, consult the WPMU DEV support team to ensure your website is running optimally on your selected hosting plan.
Auto Post Expiration
Manage post lifespan in WordPress with the Auto Post Expiration plugin.
Auto Post Expiration is another plugin you can use to easily set expiration dates for your posts in WordPress.
With just a few clicks, you can schedule posts to automatically change to “draft” status, ensuring they are no longer visible on the front end of your site.
Key features of this plugin include:
Set Post Expiration Date and Time
The plugin provides an intuitive feature that lets you easily select the desired date and time for your posts to expire and transition to the “draft” status.
Admin Column Display
Auto Post Expiration shows the expiration date and post status directly in the admin column, making it easy to stay organized and keep track of when posts are scheduled to expire.
Gutenberg and Classic Editor Support
The plugin seamlessly integrates with the block and classic editors, so you can use your preferred editing interface when creating or editing posts.
The plugin also offers a Pro version that lets you unlock advanced features, such as setting expiration dates for single posts, pages, products, and custom post types, WooCommerce Support (set expiration dates for your WooCommerce products), and email notifications for Admin.
Hopefully, this article has inspired you to use expired posts. Auto expiring posts can help you streamline your content management processes, control the lifespan of your content, and keep your website current, fresh, and relevant to enhance user experience.
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