Today, I’ve discovered yet another reason to love WordPress™.

Years ago, I “blogged” — although it wasn’t called “blogging” then — by hand-coding pages whenever I had something new to say. Due to the labor involved in hand-coding, I usually only “blogged” about once a week or so. However, as my now-nearly-a-thousand posts on this blog alone show, I enjoy the writing.

So when I discovered blogging software many moons ago, I was more than a little overjoyed. (I forget exactly when I started using blogging software, but it was certainly before June 2003, as this post shows.) At that time, I was blogging as both “Winkola” at www.winkola.com and “TechStop™” at www.techstop.com. (Winkola links to Unspun™ now; TechStop™ is up for sale and is still at www.techstop.com.)

As Winkola, I was already blogging on political issues. Faux News “reporting” style was gaining a foothold everywhere, it seemed, and I decided that it was time to start fighting the spin doctors. I registered www.unspun.us and started blogging here at Unspun™ sometime in September of 2003.

Since then, I’ve experimented with various programs from Radio Userland to CityDesk® to MovableType® and now to WordPress™.

But WordPress™! Wow! The more I use it, the more impressed I become. Recently, I added the Blog Stats module and found I was able to easily see exactly who was linking to Unspun™. I could search Google and had done that periodically, but the Blog Stats module makes it really easy. The exact page linked to me can be opened right in my Dashboard window.

That’s when I realized that my transitions from one piece of software to another have broken some links other people were using for my articles. My posts with MovableType® used numbers, such as “http://www.unspun.us/archives/000520.html” instead of easier to parse names like http://unspun.us/politics-in-general/dirty-liberal-ideas-trial-lawyers/ which make more sense to humans.

This, of course, will not do. If people take the trouble to link to me, I want to be sure their readers can find the right post. Thanks to WordPress®, the Dashboard and Blog Stats module, I’ve spent this morning going through and fixing those I could find.

With somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 posts, I’m sure I’ll never really get everything fixed. If you happen to find a broken link at Unspun™, please let me know! (If you don’t know my email address, just leaving a comment to this post will work the best.)

Meanwhile, thanks to those who have continued to read and link to Unspun™ through the years! And if you’re a blogger, check out WordPress™!