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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘link rot’ Category

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SwiftOnSecurity on Twitter: “Web developers and CMS managers literally dance on the smoldering wastes of a million Library of Alexandrias yet we permit them to act as if polite company.… “

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/04/19

[Archive.is: SwiftOnSecurity on Twitter: “Web developers and CMS managers literally dance on the smoldering wastes of a million Library of Alexandrias yet we permit them to act as if polite company.… “] quoting

Hyperlinks are a powerful tool for journalists and their readers. Diving deep into the context of an article is just a click away. But hyperlinks are a double-edged sword; for all of the internet’s boundlessness, what’s found on the Web can also be modified, moved, or entirely vanished.  The fragility of the Web poses an […]

 

It’s all about Link_rot, which is the main reason I have been posting [Wayback] (and when these do not archive, [Archive.is]) archival links in my blog posts since about 2015.
Sometimes I find time to add these to older posts as well, but given there are 7000+ blog posts published, I won’t be able to do that for all past blog posts.

—jeroen

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Posted in Internet, link rot, Power User, WWW - the World Wide Web of information | Leave a Comment »

Prevent link rot before the public condemns you

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/04/05

I’ve written about link rot quite a few times (it even has a category on my blog).

Preventing it is important, as it improves user experience.

For most users this is an unconscious thing when it works and becomes consciously annoying when it fails.

Some user groups are vocal enough to force you to fix link rot after the fact, causing brand reputation damage.

One good example was last year: [Wayback] Users condemn Microsoft for removing KB IDs from some bug documentation | Computerworld.

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Posted in Bookmarklet, Development, Internet, link rot, Power User, Software Development, Web Browsers, Web Development, Windows, WWW - the World Wide Web of information | Leave a Comment »

Bookmarklet to force WordPress classic-editor

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/29

A while ago, WordPress.com heavily started to de-emphasise the Classic Editor in order to boost the Gutenberg editor which is bloaty (in both browser DOM usage (heavily slowing down editing) and content (lots of meta tags that are added to blog source) and is missing essential features (especially nesting of blocks often breaks things).

With 7000+ blog posts in the Classic Editor format (a few in still supported markdown format: that experiment failed horribly!) that still require editing  (especially because of link rot)

So here is the Bookmarklet code to switch back an editing URL that you can use for as long as the Classic Editor is there:

javascript:location.href=document.location.href+'&classic-editor';

Yup, it is that simple: it appends &classic-editor to the URL.

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Posted in Bookmarklet, Development, Internet, link rot, Power User, Software Development, Web Browsers, Web Development, WordPress, WWW - the World Wide Web of information | Leave a Comment »

Wayback machine and VMware KB links

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/22

The VMware KB is notoriously bad into being saved in the WayBack Machine: saved links hardly render at all because of the VMware KB dynamic page loading structure.

But VMware KB articles expire, so a lot of web-pages point to non-existing links and end up through redirections at [Archive.is] https://kb.vmware.com/s/pagenotfound.

Below are a few link forms of the same VMware KB 2011818 article that vanished from the regular web. The first is saved in the WayBack Machine (but does not render), the second is saved and does render after a redirect to a saved third form, the most recent saved fourth form is actually a 404-error redirecting to a prior third form.

  1. https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2011818
  2. http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2011818
  3. http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2011818
  4. http://kb.vmware.com:80/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2011818

The first link form does archive as a rendered page in Archive.is if is is archived. t wasn’t, so the current archived version points to the “pagenotfound” page mentioned above.

Sometimes you have to dig deeper, as not all rendering archived versions contain actual content.

Here the first one is not even archived, the other ones are, but none of them have actual usable content:

  1. https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2007922
  2. http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2007922
  3. http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2007922
  4. http://kb.vmware.com:80/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2007922

This means you have to dig further in history:

  1. https://web.archive.org/web/20140123114343/http://kb.vmware.com:80/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2007922 indicates not authorized
  2. https://web.archive.org/web/20130117041323/http://kb.vmware.com:80/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2007922 shows the actual content.

–jeroen

Posted in Internet, InternetArchive, link rot, Power User, WayBack machine, WWW - the World Wide Web of information | Leave a Comment »

Booting Windows 10 to the recovery console command prompt

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/01

I bumped into an old draft on notes on NTFS boot issues.

A while ago, I wanted to boot in the Windows 10 “Safe Mode” console, but the F8 option during the boot process was gone.

So I wondered how to get there. There seem to be a few ways, of which almost all require a functioning Windows installation. When you have one, it is relatively easy, as these options will work as summarised from [Wayback] How to open the Windows 10 recovery console:

  • Hold the physical Shift key when choosing “Reboot” in the user interface. There are various ways to get to the “Power” button:
    • in the lower right corner at the logon-screen
    • in the lower right corner at the lock-screen
    • in the lower right corner after pressing Ctrl–Alt–Del
    • in the lower left corner of the “Start” menu
  • In the Settings app, there used to be an “Advanced Startup” feature, but I could not find that any more in Windows 10 version 21H1 any more
  • From a console Window, run either of these commands (the second waits zero seconds before rebooting, the first 30)
    • shutdown.exe /r /o
    • shutdown.exe /r /o /t 0

There is also a possibility to restore the F8 functionality, but you need installation media for it. [Wayback] 3 ways to boot into Safe Mode on Windows 10 version 21H1 explains how to.

Some “notes on NTFS boot issues” links for my archive

(Note that for some of the links, only the [Wayback] ones work: link-rot of the links I saved 6 years ago)

–jeroen

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Posted in Internet, link rot, Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, WWW - the World Wide Web of information | Leave a Comment »

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