Find Broken External Links in WordPress with n8n + Gmail

Find Broken External Links in WordPress—Automatically—Using n8n + Gmail

Keep your WordPress content healthy by automatically scanning recent posts for broken external links, checking each one with HTTP HEAD requests, and generating an HTML report that can be emailed via Gmail on a weekly schedule or run manually.

What this workflow does

• Runs manually or on schedule: configured to run every Monday at 9am (and supports manual execution).
• Pulls recent WordPress posts: fetches the latest published posts from the WordPress REST API using HTTP Basic Auth.
• Extracts external URLs: parses the post HTML, extracts non-site (external) URLs, and enforces a configurable maximum number of links to check per run.
• Checks link health: sends batched HTTP HEAD requests to each extracted URL using a configurable timeout.
• Classifies results: marks links as ok, broken, or needs manual review based on HTTP status codes and request errors.
• Generates an HTML report: summarizes totals and lists only broken or review links.
• Sends via Gmail (optional): when email reporting is enabled and issues are found, the workflow sends the report using Gmail; otherwise it outputs the report data without emailing.

Use cases

• SaaS operators and content teams who want continuous monitoring of outbound links in WordPress articles.
• Automation engineers maintaining link quality after migrations, vendor changes, or partner URL updates.
• Anyone managing SEO-sensitive content who needs a clear weekly checklist of broken external links.

Technical details

• WordPress integration: WordPress REST API with HTTP Basic Auth (Application Password).
• Request checking: HTTP Request node using batched HTTP HEAD checks with configurable timeout and link limits.
• Reporting + messaging: HTML report creation and Gmail delivery when emailReport = true.
• Workflow logic nodes: if, set, code, gmail, sticky note.

Setup tip: configure your WordPress site URL, number of posts to scan, link limits, and request timeout in the workflow Config values. Optionally add Gmail credentials and set the recipient address.