Simple Subject Sunday: Weed the Garden!

Colorful Garden by Hamed Saber
Attribution License

How often do you read through your archives? How do you check for broken links? Do you edit your tags? If you caught a grammatical error in a blog posting from your archives, would you fix it?

These are all pertinent questions to think about when you write a blog that you hope people will follow. Weed the Garden if you want to keep it looking good. If your links are dead, your article loses some of its meaning. I recommend checking archives, but I know that is time consuming.

Here is what I do: When I'm writing an article about a particular topic that's related to early works, I check out the links in the archived article BEFORE I include a link in the new article. This is a great way to find dead links. It's surprising how many websites change their actual names for their web pages.

Checking this links is very important for another reason. It is the way that you cite your sources, so it's critical to keep these citations current.

I wish there were some dynamic agent or web app that could check links, but I don't know of one. Do you? If so, it would be wonderful if you would share it here.

Permalinks: Improve the Validity of Your Blog

Have you ever searched for a particular topic, found what seemed like a great resource, only to discover that the link is dead?

Finding dead links is a frustrating experience. There are ways to avoid that happening to your own blog postings. One way is to use the PERMALINK. A permanent link to your blog posting is made through the use of a tiny bit of code that can even a New Bee can cut and paste into their blog postings.

Permalinks stand as one of the more elusive bits of proper standardization in archiving that I will continue to develop. I believe Permalinks are as important as tags, and everyone who reads my work knows the extreme importance I place on tags and the display of tag clouds.

As per my usual course of learning a new skill, I always begin with the Help function of whatever software or web application I am using. Always remember, "Help is my Friend!" One of the first references made to permalinks was the blog post, On Permalinks and Paradigms, and I would recommend it to anyone learning to use Permalinks.

If you have had experiences with permalinks, would you share those experiences with us here in the comments?