Wayback Machine Plugin Fixes Broken Links on WordPress

The internet is slowly breaking, but a new partnership between the Internet Archive and WordPress just gave us a powerful repair tool.

The Wayback Machine, famous for archiving billions of web pages, teamed up with Automattic to launch Link Fixer, a free WordPress plugin that tackles "link rot." This digital disease turns once-helpful links into frustrating dead ends and error messages.

The problem is bigger than you might think. A 2024 Pew Research study found that nearly 40% of links that existed in 2013 no longer work. Government sites, news articles, Wikipedia pages, and social media posts all suffer from this digital decay.

Link Fixer works quietly in the background, scanning your WordPress posts for outbound links and checking them against the Wayback Machine's massive archive. When it finds links without archived versions, it automatically takes new snapshots. If a linked page ever goes offline, readers get redirected to the archived version instead of hitting a dead end.

The plugin is smart enough to keep checking those broken links too. When an original page comes back online, Link Fixer automatically switches readers back to the live version instead of the archive.

The Ripple Effect

This tool does more than save individual websites from broken links. It helps preserve the integrity of online information for everyone who depends on the web for research, education, and understanding our shared history.

WordPress powers over 40% of all websites, so Link Fixer could protect billions of links from disappearing. The plugin even archives your own posts, ensuring your work stays accessible for future readers.

Users can customize how often the plugin checks their links, with the default set to every three days. The controls are straightforward enough for anyone to use, regardless of technical expertise.

Digital information shouldn't have an expiration date, and now it doesn't have to.