One of the more arduous tasks I’ve been undertaking recently is to fix those bloody broken links on Daisybutter. Eight years’ worth of them.
With more than 1,800 blog posts on the blog, it’s been, well, not exactly fun. I’ve been tackling it 7-8 posts an evening, sticking on an episode of Dynasty and working through reformatting, fixing broken links and archiving posts that don’t quite fit in with Daisybutter as it exists today.
First, I hear you ask, what on earth is a broken link?
A broken link simply refers to when an outdated link (most often for bloggers, this is a product page or an old blog URL) remains on your website. It could also be because your site or server is unable to process the link, the URL was linked improperly… the list goes on!
The reason broken links are talked about so frequently is because it can devalue your SEO efforts and have a negative impact on your blog or website’s page ranking on Google. We’ve all heard of the term DA (Domain Authority) by now: well, this is a great way to boost yours.
Anyway! Technical parts aside, it’s been a wild ride revisiting my archives in order to fix broken links and elevate the reading experience for you. From getting rid of posts stuffed with grainy Blackberry Pearl(!!) photos to adding pesky capital letters back in to those posts where I decided grammar was below me, I’ve learned a LOT about what blogging means to me.
1. I bloody love to blog.
It’s been so nostalgic to read through! I also spent almost every evening brainstorming new ideas for my blog: weekly features, style advice columns, try-on hauls shot in changing rooms… I could go on.
2. Frugal February was a thing!
If you also remember what Frugal February was, then you deserve a medal! Back in 2011, a group of us OG bloggers pledged to curb our spending for an entire month and simply shop our (beauty) stash and wardrobes. That was when I first became hyper-aware of the haul culture that exists in the blogging industry and when I also launched my seriously popular Ways to Wear blog series.
I stopped sharing those posts years ago, but have been refreshing the links in them lately and can’t imagine why I did. I LOVED putting those together. Ways to Wear was a once-weekly series where I took a wardrobe staple (i.e. black T-shirt, white Oxford shirt, jeans, jacket, etc.) and styled that one piece in three different ways. It replaced my weekly wishlists during Frugal February in a bid to help my readers revisit their favourite and probably long forgotten wardrobe gems.
I mean, am I tempted to reintroduce these? … Perhaps.
3. I’m incredibly driven and so passionate about my future.
The earliest days of Daisybutter consisted of everyday diary-like entries accompanied by my casual, Uni outfits. Each day, I’d open up my laptop and recount the things we’d done at Uni, how I felt, what I wanted to do and, essentially, cemented exactly why I’m so passionate about the writing world.
This blog documents my journey to starting and finishing my dissertation (about the blogging world!), the practical assignments I took on, those days when I juggled blog meetings, award shows and events alongside lectures, seminars and tutorials. I truly miss the naivety of those days, but rereading those posts has certainly ignited a fire within to reach for those goals that I seem to have pushed aside.
4. I’m exactly where I always wanted to be.
Somewhere in my 2011 archives, which was my second year of Uni and when I’d begun to frequently panic about The Real World, I wrote that I’d begun to feel disenchanted about job-hunting, when job descriptions didn’t really sing to me and I couldn’t help but feel confined to picking one thing when I wanted to do so much. I came across one post where I’d decided to take a module in ‘fashion freelancing’ and I suppose that’s where my entrepreneurial spirits really began to take root.
