How to make broken links

Published on by Jean M. Cogdell

But, trust me it’s something you really want to avoid.

A broken link in a blog looks bad.

I’ve had several and they were of my own making. Sigh…

How did I make them?

By deciding to “Spring clean” my blog. Yep, you heard right. I was looking at my media library.

And I thought (thinking was my first mistake) that I should delete a few of the older pictures. Why not? They were old.

Guess what happened? This! No picture.

But thanks to my wonderful readers I was alerted to the broken links. Without y’all I would never have realized the error of my ways.

So what to do? What to do?

I had to go back through all of my posts and put in new images.

Why did I do this in the first place?

I was concerned about running out of space. But there is a better way than mutilating my blog. And before resorting to the self-hosting leap. There is a way to decrease the impact images have on a blog.

Resize.

First, let me apologize for the lack of audio in my video. I blew out my speaker plug. But I do hope you can still follow.

To resize your pictures, just go to the media library and change their size. I change mine to 300 on one side and let the other side default.

Once an image is in your post, you can still drag and make it larger or smaller for better visuals.

Also, videos posted via YouTube do not eat up your web space.

Seems I’ve got a ways to go before I need worry, WordPress has designated me 13GB. Will take me awhile to use that up. Thank God!

Have you inadvertently deleted an image and ended up with a dead link?

Were you aware of memory storage limits on WordPress?

Have you checked your media library limit?

Do you think it’s a good idea to size your images?

Talk to me – I love reading your comments.

Please head over and “like” my Facebook page at Facebook at jeanswriting . Or to connect with me, click the “write me” tab. Don’t forget you can follow me on StumbleUpon,  on Twitter @jeancogdell , and Amazon.com.

Please stop by and say “hey!”  I’ll leave a light on. 

20 thoughts on “How to make broken links”

  2. I need to go in and resize image links in my blog. I sponsor books released by fellow bloggers using the book covers as links. Unfortunately, I have not kept them all the same size, which makes my blog look a little motley.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. Surprisingly, because I used to indulge in the creation of web graphics, mine are not all that heavy. I optimize the weight before putting them online. Still, I have some that are 275 pixels wide while others are 175 pixels wide. It looks kind of messy to me.

        Liked by 1 person

  4. I did this early on with my blog. Thankfully, I caught it quickly and was able to rectify before too much damage was done. Afterward, I had a little chat with my inner OCD nanite 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  5. A related problem is broken links in aged articles. Someone searches your site and clicks on a link from a few years before and it’s broken. So speaking of cleanup, periodically (not too often because the task itself takes an inordinate amount of time to run–could be days not hours) use a link checker like WP Broken Link Status Checker. Maybe the article got moved or maybe it’s been deleted. In any case, it reflects poorly on you if links are broken. It’s amazing how often URLs get changed or other stuff happens that breaks links.

    Liked by 1 person

  7. What frustrates me the most is the fact that when I reblog WordPress posts, WordPress copies all of the images in that post to my media library. I discovered right away that deleting those images broke links to the post.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. I reblog through PressThis and set it as a Draft instead of Publish. This gives me a chance to not only give my thoughts on the blog but to just post the reblog as a link. Avoids the problem you mentioned.

      Like

  9. I also check the links on my blog often (especially those in widgets). I’m amazed by how often they get broken for no reason. Be careful when deleting posts, because if you or anybody else has linked to it in a post, then it’s going to be broken if the original post has been deleted. A blog with lots of broken links is not a happy place and people often leave very quickly.

    Liked by 1 person

  10. Great topic and I await the comments of others. Yes I knew that you can’t delete photos and yes, I would love to spring clean as you said. Hoping for easy solutions from fellow readers

    Liked by 1 person

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