Should they stay or should they go now ?

Let me begin by saying, many thanks to the Clash for the inspiration behind today's post title. Punk rock references aside, there is a question at work here and it’s one that I would love to get you impute on.

You see, once or twice a year, I clean up my Links page. I should preface that by saying I fully acknowledge that links page themselves are seen by many bloggers as being somewhat antiquated and I know tons of folks on all rungs of the blogging ladder who ditched theirs like yesterday's newspaper ages ago. Perhaps because this is a blog where being antiquated is never a problem :), I've held onto mine and am happy to continue doing so for the time being. However...

Earlier this week I sat down to do my first cleanup of 2015 and I was struck, once again, but the tremendous volume of vintage blogs that are no more. By this I mean, they've either been taken down entirely or haven't been updated in anywhere from a handful of months to few years. I'm not going to properly delve into the topic of the reduced number of vintage blogs in recent years - that deserves a post unto itself and I may pen one in the future, but for now, I just want to get your take on what you guys think I should do in terms of my link page.

When blogs that have been shut down for good and are no longer online, I obviously have no problem simply deleting those links (and saying goodbye in my head to those lovely folks and the fond memories I have of their respective sites), but when it comes to those that haven't been updated in quite a long time (half a year or more) and/or where the blogger publicly stated that they were retiring their site, but opting to keep it online still, should I delete or keep those sites on my blogroll?



{What to do, what do? It's time to clean up my Links page again and I'm divided between keeping blogs there that are retired/abandoned and leaving them up for the wealth of information they technically still house. Please don't be shy - I'd love to hear you take on this topic! Vintage image source.}


I can see both sides of the coin here and that doesn't make things any easier. On the one hand, as I've always tried to make my blog a hub of helpful and inspiring information on the vintage (and related) front, part of me wants to keep them up. There are still great posts on those blogs and some of my readers may find it useful to discover them via my Links page.

However, on the other hand, it does make for a quicker and arguably more enjoyable reading experience if people know that they're clicking through to live blogs with new content that they may be apt to start following as a result. Honestly, I'm currently fine with either approach, but if you, my dear readers, have a strong consensus either way, at present I would be happy to go with the group majority on this one.

So (darlin’) let me know, what would you like to see? Should retired and/or presumed to be abandoned blogs remain on my Links page or should they get the axe and only active blogs remain there?


*PS* Huge and very heartfelt thanks to all of you for your splendidly lovely birthday wishes on my blog (including Friday's post), social media, by email, and snail mail this week. You've all gone above and beyond to make my 31st an extra special celebration and I am sending virtual hugs out to all of you in appreciation of that fact!

My annual Boxing Day blogroll cleanup tradition

✯ Day 360 of Vintage 365 ✯

Stuffed to the gills with immensely delicious food, giddy from the past day’s merriment, and relaxed by the fact that for many of us today means a day free from our jobs, it might seem a tad odd that I have a Boxing Day tradition that pertains to cleaning.

Lest you think I'm getting an especially early jump on my spring cleaning, allow me to explain. You see, once a year I like to go through the blog roll here on Chronically Vintage and tidy things up, removing any sites that no longer exist (shut down by their authors), which have switched to "by invite only" status, or that are no longer good matches for this site.

Having been awake for hours already, I've completed the blog tidying process for this year. It's always deeply interesting to see which blogs are still going strong and which, for whatever reason, have decided to shut down or have become abandoned (by which I mean their owners suddenly stopped blogging and did not create a post saying that they were planning to do such).

{Nothing as arduous as scrubbing the stove for me today, just doing a little light online housekeeping this fine, frosty Boxing Day. Vintage Kleenoff Jelly ad via alsis35 on Flickr.}

In the case of the later, I generally have a one year rule, by which I mean if a given blog has not seen any new activity for a year or longer, I'm more inclined to remove it from my blog roll. However, even there one encounters exceptions, because (given the historically geared nature of the topics many vintage loving bloggers cover) the content on such sites may still be of great interest to fellow vintage fans and I wouldn't want anyone to miss out on a great site simply because it's no longer going strong.

Though I do not count the precise number of links that I remove each year, I'd ballpark things and say that this time around my blog roll was shortened by about 20%. As I add new links to it throughout the year however, there's a very decent chance that come Boxing Day 2012, it will once again be much the same size as it was prior to this morning.

In fact, in briefly visiting every single blog on listing in my sidebar today, I discovered (through posts on various sites) three or four new (to me) vintage blogs, which of course I added to the roster.

One might wonder why I opted to assign Boxing Day to this yearly task and the I believe that the first time around it was something that just came about originally. Back then, in December 2009, Chronically Vintage had been online for the better part of a year and I figured it was time I pruned by blog roll (as described above) to make sure it was in peak shape for my wonderful blog visitors to enjoy.

As way of ensuring this job was carried out annual, it made sense from there on out to stick with the same day each year, and thus my annual Boxing Day tradition of tidying up my blogroll was born.

That, however, is just about the only "job" I'll be doing today. There's too many scrumptious Christmas leftovers to eat, vintage holiday songs to enjoy, and new presents to delight in to devote this marvelous day of relaxation to anything more arduous than that.

Wishing you all a terrifically fun Boxing Day, however you opt to spend it, sweet dears!