We (Pugdog, myself, and possibly a few others) had a discussion way back in the days of Links 1.1x about how to handle dead links. The gist was that we, as Links site owners, put too much work into collecting, organizing, and maintaining our precious links to simply delete them when they become inaccessible.

My solution was to create a 'Other/Dead Links' category and a custom error code that I use for setting aside such links with the hope that I'll eventually find an updated URL or it will become active again (happens maybe 10% of the time, which is better than nothing). Works pretty well, although a number of users still seem confused by the seemingly intuitive category title and still report those links as dead... It also doesn't preclude them from showing up in the Random link option, if used, although I imagine that could be gotten around by tinkering with the database query used there.

I haven't used Pugdog's Bad Link plugin, but I believe it handles things slightly differently by creating a second table that those links can be stored in as a holding bin of sorts. That's probably a cleaner method, although it doesn't allow users to help you update your dead links. They can't report what they can't see... I actually do get the occasional report of that sort.

I haven't switched over to v2.1.1 yet -- still working out a few issues with my test installation -- but I'll be going with the PHP front end when I do. Interfaces with the rest of my site much easier, although I'm not 100% sold on the idea of going purely dynamic. Seems to slow things down a bit, but it's probably less resource intensive overall (not building hundreds of low-traffic pages that rarely get viewed). Anyway, I digress...

A thought has been bouncing around in the back of my mind and is starting to take form. Being a dynamic setup (could probably be approached the same for page.cgi), I'm thinking something could be done similar to my current Dead Links category, but having it be a virtual category that mirrors all the other categories. That way, you wouldn't have to manually move links in and out of their regular category and the Dead Links category, and you wouldn't have to create all the sub-categories within Dead Links for keeping things organized. Simply set a flag to indicate the link is dead, and it would show up when browsing the virtual category structure. It would also be precluded from being shown in the regular directory when that flag is turned on.

Furthermore, a link could be added at the bottom of each category to send users to the corresponding virtual category. Why? Well, take marathons (I have a running directory), for example. Someone wants to find a marathon in their area but doesn't see the one they're looking for (because it's dead). Do you want them thinking you've done a poor job with your directory because you overlooked such an important event? Of course not. And I doubt even 1% of users would think to navigate on over to the Dead Links category to see if it happens to be lumped in there... Maybe if they search for it, but there's no guarantee they'll find it that way. But with the virtual category link, something like, "View Dead Links in this Category," they can see that you're really on the ball and it's the other site that's at fault...

I think the major modification this would require is to alter the category page queries to look for the 'dead' flag. That and building the virtual categories somehow. Any thoughts?

Dan