I think I’ve just come up with, as Blackadder would say, a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel.
I bet your blog is like mine in that it has lots of new posts going on the top which get all the attention, and very little action for all those leading up to it, no matter how deserving they might be. Some content doesn’t age well, it’s true, and perhaps some of that deserves to be culled: but then again, some content does stand the test of time. With an ever-increasing repository of blog posts, it becomes more and more difficult to do effective housekeeping.
Some other problems that older posts might suffer from include:
- link rot
- dead videos
- broken images
A minor (but essential) digression: do you know about the ‘?random’, err, thingy? I’ve used it myself here on Wibble, it’s hidden behind the ‘Random post’ clicky on the menu bar. I’ve only just realised that that can be applied to any WordPress blog: you just add ‘?random’ to anyold.wordpress.com address, like this:
https://pendantry.wordpress.com/?random
… and that takes you automagically to a random page on that site. The point is, you see, it works for any WordPress site. Yours. Mine. Theirs.
So… on to my Cunning Plan: if we were to club together in a ‘random housekeepers’ groupage, we could all check each others’ blogs for duff content in a ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ kind of way. How it works is this:
- You use the ‘?random’ thingy to visit a random page on my blog.
- If the page you end up at is ok, no harm is done (and maybe you’ve enjoyed the visit).
- BUT, if there’s something wrong with the page (dead links, out-of-date content, that kind of thing) you simply leave a comment on that page to point out what the problem is. This will alert me that I need to look at it…
- … and then I go to a ‘?random page’ on your site and return the favour.
What say you? Are you in?
Wibble 
It’s a clever idea but one that I would rather not participate in.
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Fair enough, Paul, no worries! :)
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Sorry, my friend!
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Sincerely defeated by your ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ in a digital context. No, seriously, I think it’s a good idea… I’ll take a random walk down Wibble Street from time to time and let you know if I find anything broken… As you say links, etc. are a real headache… What about a post on digital longevity and immortality? I think what we see in a blog gives us some clues on our own biology, as you wisely suggest with your monkey algorithm 😉
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Digital longevity and immortality? I already have a post about that 😉 But I’d love to hear what you have to say on the topic!
O.o… deja vu. Here we have another dilemma: Where do we continue this conversation, my blog, or yours?
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Indeed – what happens to our blogs on our demise. Something that PeNdantry and I have been discussing on a post – some interesting comments and reflections here: https://forestwoodfolkart.wordpress.com/2021/09/26/transfering-or-inheriting-an-existing-blog/
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Hey, Paco: to avoid simply copy-pasting, can I instead direct your attention to my (second) reply to revruss1220, below?
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Sure! Why not? I love the idea of the WordPress community looking after one another.
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Awesome! I’ve been visiting a lot of ?random posts on other sites lately, and though I’ve not found a lot wrong, I’ve also found a lot of interesting posts that would otherwise be just gathering dust :)
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Hi again :) I’ve just been re-reading some old comments and came across this one that suggests that you’re in favour of this idea. I thought I’d point out that the Cunning Plan has evolved a bit… I’d like to invite you, if you have a moment, to wander over to the ?Random Raiders! microsite – and perhaps consider following the ‘join’ link, if you feel so inclined?
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I’ve always been worried about that. It’s a part of the reason why I don’t really post videos/photos/etc.
No problems on the one I saw.
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Thanks for taking part in the experiment! :)
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The pleasure is all mine.
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After you having a successful BLT of your own, I have borrowed your random post tip to add to my categories menu as part payment.
I’ll be back for more. ;)
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Excellent, that’s what I like to hear :)
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Pingback: The blog-driven time machine | Wibble
Pingback: Announcing: ?Random Raiders! | Wibble
Reblogged this on ?Random Raiders!.
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Hi PeNdantry. I’ve just signed up to Random Raiders – it’s a great idea and a good way of checking each other’s blogs for any issues that may have occurred. Only one problem for me; is that I tried this out on my own blog, and it took me to a post I wrote back in May 2014. When I looked over it, I could see one of the images had timed out or expired (or whatever happens to old images) – but the post it took me to was one of the first I wrote and really do not like anymore (as also applies to my other old posts!) I was a very different writer back then – much more amateur, full of angst and depression and talking about awful experiences I’d been through. I’m not sure I want anyone going back and reading these, so I am wondering whether to delete them. I would appreciate your advice and feedback on this matter. Thanks very much. P.S. There would be an awful lot to delete as I’ve been writing since 2014, and not very well at that time. Thanks.
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Hi there, latest recruit to the 💥 ?Random Raiders! 💥 :)
Sorry to hear that you had a tough time back then, and I hope that things are better for you now.
I wrote a comment in response… but when I reviewed it before hitting ‘Post Comment’, I realised that it was way, waaaay too long! It deserves to be a post in its own right, so I’ve transferred it into a draft new post. I’ll try to get it tidied up and scheduled, possibly for Tuesday week (10May2022). I hope that the wait will be worth it!
I will say this, here, though, regarding:
Images don’t time out, or expire. The only thing that can happen to them is that they get moved, or deleted.
One example involves some images that I had hosted on photobucket[dot]com, a site that was once free but has changed its tune in recent years. A while back, they put their watermark on my images (!) and, more recently, they’ve been nagging me to pay them munny (I’ve told them, in no uncertain terms, to take a hike).
And, as it happens, fellow ?Random Raider! Goldie pointed me just recently to a 2007 Wibblette that had broken images on it because of the move from Windows Live Spaces (my comment on that page gives more details on that).
If you could point me to the 2014 post to which you refer (perhaps by email, so as to not to add to linkrot by creating a link to a post that you might choose to delete!) I can take a look at this image issue you’re talking about and, perhaps, identify what the problem is.
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Hi PeNdantry. Thanks for taking the time to write this helpful and detailed reply to my questions. It’s interesting that images sometimes get deleted. How annoying to go back and find a watermark all over yours. You were so right in not paying them any money – neither would I have done! What a cheek!
From my end, I did actually go back and delete many of my early posts because I wasn’t comfortable owning them anymore. I was very, very much a different person back then, and not proud of my posts now I look back. I’m happy with my decision to do that. They were really far too raw and depressing, and I’m just not that person anymore (thank goodness for that). The 2014 post was one of the posts I deleted, but I came across another called Bowing Out in 2018. This has an image missing, so I’d be grateful if you wouldn’t mind checking that out for me. It’s at https://wordpress.com/post/elliethompson.uk/15992. Not sure if that link will work as, for some reason, this post seemed to be ‘stuck’ in drafts. By all means, give it a go, though.
I have also checked out a couple of other blogs on Random Raiders and found them both in order. Thanks again, PeNdantry, for your help here. Ellie
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That link you offer is, as you say, a link to a draft post; I have no access to it. When you look at it in the ‘Posts’ listings in /wp-admin, select the post in the list, ‘Quick Edit’, check ‘Status’ value on the right-hand side: what does that say? I’m unclear what you mean by ‘stuck in draft’…
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Try this link. It looks more likely (I think). The status is ‘Public’ if that’s any help. Thanks.
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I think I see the problem here… The image in question is linked via bing.com. Would I be right in assuming that you might have searched for an appropriate image for your post, and then included it via a link presented to you from bing.com? If that’s what happened then its inclusion in your post would be dependent upon the continued existence of the original image, wherever that might be… and my guess is that that image has been deleted, or perhaps the site it was hosted on has gone walkies/ changed its domain name/ ‘refreshed’ its design (if you get me started on that last, I’ll be ranting forever!) or some such.
I learned, mainly as a result of the photobucket and Windows Live [sic] Spaces troubles I mentioned earlier, to only include in my Wibblettes images that are hosted in my site’s image library so that I don’t fall foul of this problem. Or if I do, it’s because I’ve had a brain fart and deleted the image by mistake… as in fact I did just the other day!‡
My advice to you here would be to adopt the same approach from now on, as that gives you control over the image content. Speaking of which, of course, there is the matter of copyright on images (which can often be sidestepped by using sites that offer copyright-free images, such as Unsplash and Pexels).
‡ Such cases are usually fixable because one can upload another copy of the image, assuming there’s a backup, and just update the link to its new location in the media library, but in this particular case the post is a ‘Reblog’, and I can’t do that with this one.
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Hi. I’m afraid I don’t understand most of that. Sorry. I’m a very amateur writer and have never learned all the ‘tricks of the trade!’ I did look at your first link, ‘I did just the other day’ but still don’t get it! I’m not even sure where to find my media library, if I have one! Thanks for the info about Splash and Pexels for free images though. I was using Bing when I wrote that post. Now Google has made it easier as all copyrighted images are marked with a sort of square in the corner or they’re watermarked. In future, I’ll definitely use Splash and Pexels though. I’ll also have a rummage to see if I do actually have a media library from long ago that I might be missing now. Sorry, this is about as clear as mud, but I hope you get the gist of it, although I would understand if not 🤔
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The ‘I did just the other day’ link was just an aside, one that, in retrospect, it would have been better to have omitted as it just muddied the waters. Sorry!
WordPress.com/support is your friend: this page talks about your site’s media library. The library will contain many images from your site from its inception. However, images that are transcluded, which essentially means ‘hosted elsewhere’, won’t be. As you don’t have control over others’ images, the best way forward to ensure longevity for your content is to only include images that exist in your own media library. Make copies, where you have permission to do so, of images you want to use, upload them to your media library, and include them in your pages from there.
You may also find my post The green way to blog longevity via image optimisation of interest.
I’ve been fooling around with computers for decades and sometimes forget how much I know about this stuff (though I certainly do not know it all!). If I say anything that isn’t clear, please do shout, and I’ll do my best to help.
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Cheers! to all Random Raiders, old & new!
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Cheers to you, too, Ju-Lyn! :)
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