Internet Archive's Wordpress Plugin Brings Dead Links Back to Life
If you run your website with Wordpress, you can automatically bring dead links back to life. One plugin is all it takes.
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The Internet Archive released a new plugin for Wordpress this week. The software, called "Internet Archive Wayback Machine Link Fixer," scans Wordpress sites for dead links. If found, and if an archived version exists in the archive, the link will redirect there in the future. A page that has not yet been archived will also be indexed by the Internet Archive if it still exists. The plugin thus also helps the archive project to complete its data stock. You can decide for yourself whether your own Wordpress installation should be indexed.
As the Archive writes in its introduction of the plugin, this can take several days for extensive Wordpress sites. Once the check is complete, the load on the systems should be significantly lower. A link is considered dead if it is unreachable three times in a row during the Archive's weekly checks. As with all search bots, however, not all websites allow indexing by the Internet Archive. The plugin does not require an API key for the Archive; if one is available, your own pages can be indexed faster.
The Web Doesn't Forget
The plugin is intended to help curb the data loss on the web that exists, contrary to the common assertion that "the internet forgets nothing," specifically the effect of "link rot." According to a study by Pew Research from 2024, 38 percent of websites that still existed in 2013 had disappeared in the previous ten years. The period examined was therefore from 2013 to 2023. Everywhere the researchers looked, whether at Wikipedia, journalistic offerings, or government websites, they found dead links.
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Tracking information and its development is thus becoming increasingly difficult over time. Some companies, such as Twitter after its acquisition by Elon Musk, are increasingly evading research and archiving by restricting their API access or access without an account.
The tool, developed together with Automattic, the owner of Wordpress, can be downloaded from wordpress.org. Sources and documentation can be found on Github.
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