This blog has been running since December of 2008 and in that time I have written many articles, and to provide more information and references, those articles contain many hyperlinks, 13,659 of them to be specific.
One of my favorite web articles is titled “Cool URIs don’t change.” It is an article that I read a very long time ago, perhaps 10 years ago or more. Today it is still at the same address as ever. Despite the debunked arguments for moving files, and the tools to lessen the impact of moves, web pages disappear and links go bad. In my case, there are 74 84 87 89 104 bad links (and counting!) still on this blog that I know of. In addition to those there are 247 redirects (the web site tells you where the file has gone) and 7 “warnings” that I still have to look at.
To quantify and deal with the problem, I have installed the “Broken Link Checker” plug-in and I must say that it is a very nice piece of software in most respects. I found it through an “ad” at archive.org (which, by the way, is getting a new user interface). I support archive.org financially, and have a donation link on this site’s sidebar (I hope it still works 😯 ).
I always wanted this to be a reference site and that makes hyperlinks all the more important. Some links, particularly to removed YouTube videos, are a lost cause. The biggest offenders seem to be newspapers. Over the following days, I will be working through the list and fixing what I can.
The password to what? And who’s “Mark” supposed to be?