The Internet Archive has begun fighting the “death” of links on the internet

The “Internet Archive” project launches a new plugin for WordPress

*Internet Archive* — a non‑profit organization whose goal is to preserve the digital content of the web for future generations. Last week it introduced its fresh tool that will help WordPress site owners keep their links working.

What’s new?
Wayback Machine (the web‑page archiving service) has partnered with Automattic — the company behind the popular CMS WordPress. Together they released the Link Fixer plugin.

The main purpose of the plugin is to fight link “rot.”

Why it matters?
- Web articles gradually lose relevance: links point to non‑existent pages or return errors.
- According to Pew Research 2024, almost 40 % of links from 2013 are already unavailable.
- This affects various types of sites: news portals, government resources, Wikipedia, and even tweets.

How Link Fixer works?
1. Scanning – the plugin reviews all outbound links on a WordPress site’s pages.
2. Checking in Wayback Machine – if a link is already archived, everything is fine; if not, the plugin automatically creates a new snapshot.
3. Redirecting – when the original page becomes inaccessible, visitors are redirected to its archived version, preserving web connectivity.
4. Archiving user posts – helps ensure long‑term preservation of content.

The plugin also can return users to the original page if it becomes available again.

Ease of use
- Settings are simple: you can set the link‑checking interval (default is every three days).
- Plugin management is intuitive; a detailed overview has already been published on GitHub.

Thus, *Link Fixer* makes WordPress sites more resilient to link loss and helps keep information accessible even after it disappears from the web.