The Internet Archive has introduced a new tool aimed at preserving the integrity of online writing, announcing a partnership with Automattic, the company behind WordPress, to help publishers protect their content from digital decay. The nonprofit, best known for its Wayback Machine, said the new feature is designed to support WordPress users in maintaining the long term reliability and historical value of their articles.
At the centre of the collaboration is a new WordPress plug in called Link Fixer, created to address the growing problem of link rot. Link rot occurs when hyperlinks embedded in online articles stop working over time, leading readers to error pages or dead ends instead of the original sources. A 2024 study by the Pew Research Center found that nearly 40 percent of links that existed in 2013 were no longer active, highlighting the scale of the problem across news sites, government pages, Wikipedia entries, and social media posts.
According to Automattic, the plug in works by scanning WordPress posts for outbound links and checking whether archived versions of those links already exist in the Wayback Machine. Where no archive is found, the system automatically creates a snapshot of the linked page. If the original page later goes offline, readers are seamlessly redirected to the archived version, ensuring continuity and preserving context.
Beyond protecting external links, the tool also archives a user’s own posts, helping to safeguard original content against future loss. The system continuously monitors links over time, and if a previously broken link becomes active again, the plug in switches readers back to the live source rather than the archived copy. This approach is designed to balance historical preservation with access to up to date information.
Documentation published on GitHub shows that the plug in is designed to be accessible and flexible. Users can customise how frequently their links are checked for validity, with the default setting scanning every three days. By combining automation with user control, the Internet Archive and Automattic aim to make digital preservation a routine part of everyday publishing, rather than a specialised afterthought.