Of Broken Links and Sources

L i n k s . . .

Just a quick note to say that the broken links that I wrote about three days ago have all been fixed.  Well ... maybe I should say that I believe they have all been fixed!  Bottom line is that this blog and my West Virginia Heritage website are in sync again.

However, if you do find a link in one of the older posts that doesn't work, please let me know so I can get it corrected.

S o u r c e s . . .

One thing I did note while I was going back through posts was that one of the older posts contained a link to a Sources page on the website - but I haven't had a Sources page online for quite some time.  At the end of each person's info you will find Citations giving a "short" version of my source.  The purpose of the old Sources page was to provide the "full" version of the source.

Why did I pull that page?  Well ... I noticed that there were a lot of discrepancies in how the full sources were appearing and I wanted to get them cleaned up.  Like I said, that was a while ago ... (make that a long while ago) ... and I sort of moved on to other things ... (make that forgot about working on the full sources).

Actually, I've done enough cleanup since then that those sources are probably much better than they used to be as the Citations (short versions) are in pretty good shape.  Well ... maybe I should say that I believe they are in pretty good shape.

The Citations on the website will give you a fair amount of detail about my sources, but I may have additional info about a given source - just send me an email using the link at the bottom of the website page you're viewing if you want to ask about a specific source.

The big hold-up on putting the full version of sources online again is that I know I need to update many that relate to census records.  I changed the way I recorded census info in my database a long time ago, but never finished making updates so that older entries would read correctly.  I have the info ... it just doesn't present well at this time. 

Looks like another job to add to my "to do" list (it keeps growing longer rather than getting shorter)!

Advice Is Meant To Be Taken

It dawned on me yesterday that changes I had made on my WV Heritage website in March rendered all of the person links from this blog to the website obsolete.

Here's the explanation I had put on the website:

If you have previously saved any links to specific people, please use one of the indexes to find each individual and replace the old link with the new one. This is necessary as the site has been changed from a "one folder, one person" basis to a one folder, multiple persons" basis. As a result, URLs now reflect a page number that specifies the folder in addition to the individual's ID number in my database. Here is an example of how this affects the old links using Herbert Samuel Kuhn, who is ID#9. His old link ended with p9.htm, while the new link ends with p1.htm#i9.

So....

I have started looking back through posts and changing the non-working links to valid links.  It has actually turned into a good exercise as I am finding a few other links to sites that now have a new address.  I was rolling right along until I got to mid 2012 and hit a brick wall.  No, not a genealogist's idea of a brick wall; it was more of a "it's time to get some sleep" brick wall.  I have another couple years to go as this blog was born on 11 November 2010.

Bottom line:  I hope that folks that visit the website are better at taking my advice than I was.  I had cautioned that old links would no longer work ~ I even notified another blogger that he needed to update a link ~ and yet it took another month for it to dawn on me that I needed to update my own blog!

Yep, advice is meant to be taken.  Hi ho, hi ho, it's back to work I go ...