Summary:
Migrating a large archive of content to WordPress isn’t always as simple as hitting “import.” During a WordPress migration while moving legacy news posts to a new WordPress website, we encountered messy data—repeated featured images and broken links in WordPress, including broken external links and broken URLs. With some smart import adjustments, a careful site audit, and thoughtful custom field logic, we were able to find and fix broken links and turn a frustrating import into a fully functioning archive on the WordPress site
Issue Background
During the migration of a legacy website while moving to a new WordPress environment, two major problems appeared after the first import on the WordPress dashboard:
➡️ Duplicate Featured Images:
Multiple news posts ended up displaying the same featured image, creating issues across the WordPress site and hurting visual consistency.
➡️ Broken External Links:
A custom “external link” field caused broken links on your WordPress site and triggered errors if the URL wasn’t perfectly formatted with https://, leading to broken URLs, 404 error issues, and poor user experience.
Both issues made the WordPress website look unprofessional, negatively impacted search engine visibility, and broke user trust.
Diagnosis
We ran a detailed site audit during WordPress development to identify broken links and review the import scripts, plugins, and custom fields setup:
✔️ The duplicate images came from a scraping tool and plugin configuration that didn’t handle similar metadata properly—often assigning one image URL to multiple posts.
✔️ The broken links traced back to a strict URL validation rule rejecting plain text or incomplete URLs in the external links field, which caused broken outgoing links and dead links across internal and external links.
Resolution Steps
1️⃣ Refining the Import Script
We rebuilt the import process to fetch individual featured images for each post during the WordPress migration, ensuring unique images and preventing issues like broken internal links caused by reused metadata.
2️⃣ Image Optimization
We resized and compressed oversized images and ran an update to improve load times, performance, and overall WordPress hosting efficiency.
3️⃣ Fixing the External Link Field
By converting the external link field from strict URL validation to plain text, we eliminated errors caused by broken URLs while keeping flexibility for editors and preventing links that no longer exist.
4️⃣ Conditional Logic for Display
External links now open in new tabs as outbound references, while internal links remain native to the site, improving navigation, SEO, and user experience.
Final Outcome
With custom coding, content clean-up, and careful handling of plugins and WordPress plugins, we transformed the chaotic import into a polished news archive. Every post now displays correctly, links behave reliably, broken links on the WordPress site are removed, and the entire system works smoothly without redirect issues or crawl errors.
Need help finding and fixing broken links, managing tricky WordPress migrations, or custom post logic?
👉 Let’s Solve It → Contact Integriti Studio
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