Migrating content can be a real pain.

Over two years ago now, I migrated all of my sqlblog.com content here. It wasn't quite as much work as this project over on SQLPerformance.com, but it was still a major undertaking… and I let unfinished stuff sit for far too long.

Over this past weekend, I decided to handle a few of the tasks I'd kept putting off.

• Added redirect stubs for all of my 2018 posts on SQLPerformance.com and MSSQLTips.com. This sounds easy, but it is very tedious to get these posts and redirects into WordPress (especially without triggering unnecessary "new post!" notifications to all subscribers).
• Corrected hundreds of dead links, mostly msdn.microsoft.com and Microsoft blog links that have been abandoned. Some I found in a new location, some I pointed at the WayBack Machine, some I just removed because they were no longer relevant. Still many more to investigate.
• Added featured images to most posts so that something shows up beside them in the list format of archive or search results. I think I have close to 90% coverage here – though in a lot of cases, it's just a generic image (like T-SQL Tuesday, SQLSaturday, or a specific SQL Server version).
• Updated categories for posts to make sure they were accurate (most of the migrated content was just filed under "General" or "SQL Server").
• Started hand-modifying all code snippets still suffering from awful Community Server formatting (blockquotes, missing carriage returns, error messages in tiny fonts).
• Located and restored many broken images due to being hosted externally. Some still pointed to aaronbertrand.com (which a squatter stole years ago) and some pointed to the SentryOne blog (which moved domains and changed directory structures).
• Improved snippet coloring for PowerShell code samples. Probably doesn't match your preferences, but how could I ever do that?

  param ([string]$foo, [string]$bar)
   
  function StartJobs 
  {
    param ([string]$foo, [string]$bar)
    Start-Job -ScriptBlock { C:\csv\JobTest.ps1 $foo $bar }
  }
   
  StartJobs -foo $foo -bar $bar;
  # here's a comment

• Removed all references to controversial terms like slave, whitelist, blacklist, and even grandfather. In SQL Server specifically, though, blindly replacing master is impossible, and proper treatment of that word will be a much more involved effort.
• Corrected all "SQL Saturday" references to SQLSaturday (no space).
• Cleaned up ancient spam, and turned off comments on all posts more than two weeks old.
• Various other cleanup far too tedious to itemize.

We're never really done, are we?