I've given this a lot of thought over time, for exactly the reasons you give. The links are really important, and sometimes they will come back, and sometimes they are gone forever, but to simply lose them, is a wasted resource.

The way links handles things, the best way to get rid of them, is if they show up dead for a week or so, to physically move them to a holding table. Preserve the category relations (copy the cat_links to a hold_cat_links table -- remember, these ID's are unique in links, they are not reused, unless manually overridden).

Use a simple script to flick through the links, and manually check them, and if they are live again, move them back.

You could use a flag field, but that would mean updating any of the routines that access the database, to recognize that flag field.

Alex has not yet implemented a dynamic flag system, for control of links display, so to do that, you'd have to modify anywhere a database call is made, to include a "and not isDead" clause.

This gets tricky, especially as more and more plugins make use of the database, and do things on their own.

The only way to really control this, is to install the dynamic flag system, and make it a part of the Links SQL calling engine.


PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.

The best way to contact me is to NOT use Email.
Please leave a PM here.