1.7 KiB
1.7 KiB
aliases, Is A, Belongs to, Status, Owner
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Task | 24q1 | Done | person-luca-rossi |
Fix broken links in newsletter archive
An audit of the newsletter archive revealed 47 broken links across roughly 120 published editions. Most were caused by external sites changing their URL structure, a few were internal links to pages that had been reorganized. Broken links hurt SEO, degrade the reader experience for anyone browsing older editions, and reflect poorly on the brand when sponsors evaluate the archive.
The task involved running a link-checking tool across the entire archive, categorizing the broken links (external vs. internal, fixable vs. permanently dead), and either updating the links or adding appropriate redirects. For permanently dead external links, the approach was to link to the Wayback Machine archive or replace with an equivalent current resource.
Acceptance criteria
- Run link checker across all 120+ archive pages
- Categorize broken links by type (external dead, external moved, internal broken)
- Fix or replace all 47 identified broken links
- Set up a monthly automated link check using a scheduled script
- Verify no new broken links introduced by the fixes
Notes
- The automated monthly link check was set up using a cron job and a simple Python script. It sends a Slack notification when new broken links are detected. See procedure-link-audit for details.
- Several broken links pointed to Medium articles that had been paywalled. These were replaced with direct links to the authors' personal sites where available.
- This was more tedious than expected but necessary. Archive SEO value depends on link health.