Debbie Bennett's Missing Links
I’ve been editing my website/blog recently. I thought it was time to update pages, since I’ve recently retired, and maybe prune a lot of stuff before thinking about moving over to Wordpress, as blogger just gets more and more difficult to use. It looks like pruning might be easier than I thought since at least 50% of the links no longer work!
I don’t check this kind of thing regularly – maybe I should – but I admit to being surprised. Some of the links to bigger and more commercial sites are gone, and I’ve learned a huge lesson here to keep copies of blog posts as I suspect they are gone for good. I blogged on and off for several years for the Harrogate Crime Festival – and it was a good ten years ago, but I didn’t expect the whole online You’re Booked ‘community’ website to simply vanish without trace, especially since the festival is bigger than it used to be. Annoyingly, while I’d reposted on my website, I had only posted the first paragraph with a link to the full article elsewhere. That always seemed to be the polite thing to do – to send traffic to the site where something was originally published, but I wasn’t expecting it all to vanish! I have emailed to ask if there is an archive, but I’m not holding my breath.
And then there are those who are still writing. Whose blogs and websites are still active and with new content. People that I may not be close to but have chatted with on Facebook, engaged with in some way in the past, people who had ‘hosted’ me in some way. I say had, because my link – to drive my traffic to their page – is now dead. My content is gone. That’s just rude. Am I no longer good enough for your audience and you didn’t want or couldn’t be bothered to tell me?
I don’t check this kind of thing regularly – maybe I should – but I admit to being surprised. Some of the links to bigger and more commercial sites are gone, and I’ve learned a huge lesson here to keep copies of blog posts as I suspect they are gone for good. I blogged on and off for several years for the Harrogate Crime Festival – and it was a good ten years ago, but I didn’t expect the whole online You’re Booked ‘community’ website to simply vanish without trace, especially since the festival is bigger than it used to be. Annoyingly, while I’d reposted on my website, I had only posted the first paragraph with a link to the full article elsewhere. That always seemed to be the polite thing to do – to send traffic to the site where something was originally published, but I wasn’t expecting it all to vanish! I have emailed to ask if there is an archive, but I’m not holding my breath.
Other broken links go to writer friends’ websites. Reciprocal stuff we’ve done over the years to help each other out, cross-pollinate readers etc. Interviews, Q&A sessions, reviews. And now just a 404 error or a blog no longer exists. It’s been nearly 20 years since I first met a lot of online writer friends and maybe many have stopped writing, moved on with their lives in different directions and simply deleted their blog; I get that, though I’m not sure it’s something I’d do. Even if I stopped writing (and let’s face it, I haven’t written anything new and meaningful in quite some time), I’d leave a free blog alone if it’s costing nothing and hurting nobody.
If I do something for somebody’s website or blog, I do it for them and me. I get my words out there and they get content. It’s a symbiotic relationship. I will write carefully and for their audience and I don’t really appreciate losing it forever. My mistake, I guess, for being naïve and not keeping copies. For thinking we were doing each other favours. I’m almost tempted to go through and see if I’ve hosted words from those who have deleted me and give them the same treatment, but that would be petty and mean and I’m not like that. There may be reasons I don't know about, after all. But it still stings to lose content.
The moral of this tale is either keep copies of everything (it’s only a blog post, but I’m an often curiously attached to some things I write) or to repost on your own site in entirety, with just a citation at the end of where it was originally published.
Lessons learned.
For the record, there are several admins for this blog and at the moment, I own the domain name authorselectric.co.uk which redirects to the blogger url. I would never simply delete all the content without warning. Provided there is somebody to manage stuff, it will go on - and even if we run out of contributors or posts, it costs nothing to keep this blog alive.
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