Link Rot on BYOAC

[Dave_K.]

First off I'd like to say I love BYOAC, and that PJay, Tom, and Saint are doing a fantastic job (especially with the latest work on the forums).  But I've noticed a lot of link rot creaping into the other neglected parts of BYOAC.  For example, I found 6 dead links in the Controls->Spinner sub-section alone.  I'm willing to bet there is a lot more in other sections.

Maybe this is the reason why more and more newbies ask so many questions that should be answered in other parts of this site...(or maybe they are just lazy and don't want to research topics ).  Obviously the main draw to BYOAC is the outstanding community/forum...but the rest of the site really needs to be gone through and brought up to date.  I know this is a lot of work, especially for only a few admins (who have day jobs and do this soley out of love for the hobby)... but it would be a shame to see such a great resource eventually boil down to just a couple forums.

Unfortunally I can't offer any ideas on how to help the admins get this work done (since they are soley responsible for maintaining the site).  Anyone else have ideas?

-Dave K.

[gnat3y3]

 a lot of sites use a 'dead link' reporting function, which could be helpful or if saint is down with it we can all just go thru the site and report the dead ones to him, if he wants that.

i have found that too, and it is disheartening to find somehting that you were looking for and then discove rhte link is dead

[dag2000]

Some people may have copies of the info from dead links.  I'm going to suggest that they post here to notify the powers that be (great guys) that the information is still available.  Perhaps someone else (myself included) would would be willing to host some of the data or it could be posted on BYOAC?

-Dave

[tom61]

The reason most of the links aren't updated is because they have to be modified manually. We've gotten a bit spoiled with the new database driven Examples page, as it takes only a few seconds to find and change a link (once we get around to it anyway).

It wouldn't surprise me if we (the admins) had records of every dead link on the entire multi-megabytes of text on this site. There are automated CGI trackers of 404 links running, and we get quite alot of 'dead link' reports mailed to us.

If you really want to help, choose a page(say, the spinners page, since it's already come up) , bring it up in the Netscape HTML editor (what Saint uses), and correct the links. Save it and upload it to a web space somewhere. Tell us about it, and we'll do some final editing (some of the files are named differently than are displayed) to make it ready. Of course, you still have to wait for us to get time, but the hard and time consuming task would be done for us.

[planetjay]

Actually HowardC has said he'll be going through and compiling a list of dead and new links. Then I'll be fixing them. And while I don't what Howard's schedule is, I wouldn't count on the job being complete for a for another few weeks as I am really busy right now.

Also it should be concidered that saint is EXTREMELY busy in his REAL LIFE, and as such will not be making any changes until the fall. At that time however it is planned that an entire make over of the whole website will occur. Until then be patient and hope that his real life job doesn't kill him!

[Dave_K.]

Hmmm so moving this off the main board isn't some sort of censoring is it  .  I understand the issues of manually editing HTML (I was a webmaster for several years in the late 90s).   I guess its best to handle this during a site wide conversion to database driven content management.  Its just a shame to see the link rot growing.

Or maybe we could do sort of like the adapot a highway, where users adopt a webpage to clean up...then you could add a little sign at the bottom saying "cleaned up by joeuser"    just an idea.

So what has Saint been up to (in his real life)?  He has been noticably absent for quite some time.

-Dave

[planetjay]

No just moving it to the correct forum and I also changed the forum slightly to better fit your post.

I am currently looking at a php and mySQL based system to run an entire website. If it works well... I'll suggest it to saint too! I try to test things on one of my 4 domains or even a subdomain before suggesting it. This Message Board was tested on 2 of my websites AND I did 2 or 3 test upgrades before it went live. So now you know a little bit more about what could be lurking in the future of the board.

Adopting a page could work but administration of that would be horrible! Still I like the idea. And I seriously doubt it.

Well, all I know for sure is that saint's real job (in real life) keeps him busy. I think he said something about it slowing down in the Fall. So maybe in a few more months it'll be back the way it used to be. If not, we'll just keep updating the existing website until he has more time.

[Davestar]

If you really want to help, choose a page(say, the spinners page, since it's already come up) , bring it up in the Netscape HTML editor (what Saint uses), and correct the links. Save it and upload it to a web space somewhere. Tell us about it, and we'll do some final editing (some of the files are named differently than are displayed) to make it ready. Of course, you still have to wait for us to get time, but the hard and time consuming task would be done for us.

OK, I started mine at:
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/dstarlin/byoac/  .

It's not completed, but I think its closer.
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Dave