Wanted: WordPress plugin to deal with AP lunacy
Jun 17th, 2008
Now you know why a whole bunch of bloggers don’t want to link to Associated Press stories anymore. (See: The Associated Press has gone mad.)
I’d like a WordPress plugin to help me — and others –deal with this nonsense. The No AP links! plugin I want would:
- search through my blog entries and find any links to Associated Press stories
- allow me to flag, edit, or delete each of those those entries
- allow me to disable a flagged blog entry, and redirect those who attempt to visit the flagged page. So say I linked to an AP story last month. The plugin would make it so that anybody who follows a link to that entry on my blog would be redirected to a page of my choice. I might send them to a page on my site that would explain why I no longer link to any AP stories, or maybe somebody else will make a website about the issue, and I’ll link to that.
- allow me to undo this on an individual basis (like if I get around to editing an entry, say, to quote text from a different news source) or site-wide (if the A.P. regains its sanity).
A plugin would save me the work of doing this in more laborious ways. Using .htaccess to put in dozens of redirects seems like overkill. What I’m after here is an easy way that will help me AND every other WordPress blogger who wants to stop sending traffic to A.P.
So. Anybody feel like writing a plugin? Or can you suggest something else that will accomplish the same thing?
The closest thing that I can think of is the Search and Replace plugin. Hope it helps.