Wayback Machine Joint

Automattic has been working with the Internet Archive to develop a plugin to combat link rot, and it’s a plugin I’d encourage you to install. As the plugin says:

When a linked page disappears, the plugin helps preserve your user experience by redirecting visitors to a reliable archived version. It also works proactively by archiving your own posts every time they’re updated, creating a consistent backup of your content’s history.

I’ve been doing this manually on my old archives, fixing broken links and tending the garden. But we can make it all automatic. 🙂

12 thoughts on “Wayback Machine Joint

  1. Never do anything by hand that a machine can do for free automatically. When I sussed out how The Wayback machine worked, I was delighted to automate the process and wrote
    https://vertikal.dk/linkrot-solved-problem
    Later I also made it into a slick WordPress plug-in (to little effect, though)
    https://wordpress.org/plugins/add-smart-wayback-machine-links-to-urls/

    It’s wonderful to see more work getting done in this area. If we’re lucky – and the webmasters are smart – broken links will be much less of a problem.

    Maybe the plug-ins should link to on another?

  2. This is colossal. My site features articles about history that I’ve researched, with links to source articles. After nearly 19 years, a good number of the links in my older posts are bad.

    1. That’s sadly not uncommon. Tools and services at archive.org are often down for days (or even weeks) at a time.

      We made
      https://www.drupal.org/project/wayback_submit_archive
      back when no API key was necessary, and it worked pretty well. Then the API key became necessary. Spotty API service and the public’s complete and utter disinterest in the plugin made us abandon it.

      But hang in there. You will get your API key, you will get it all to work and the world will become a better world with better links!

      Also look at the Tools section at
      https://web.archive.org/
      The browser extensions are pretty good (I prefer them to the “Save Page Now”) and can tide you over until the API key works.

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