Comment 4 for bug 435599

After discussion with Curtis we have concluded that the solution to this issue is more procedural than one of testing. The root cause of the broken link was the URL changing on the blog side right before roll-out. Even if we had link checkers in place in the days leading to roll-out the problem would not have been averted.

Another issue is one of embargoed blog entries that would not be available until the last minute. Tests on those links would give false positives.

Recommendations:

1) Remove hard links in favor of feeds, as noted previously in this bug.
2) Until then, the Release Manager should personally verify the front page links before roll-out or delegate that task. It should be part of a pre-roll checklist.
3) At the time of the release a blog editor should be available to make blog-side changes if necessary. The Release Manager or delegate should verify the front page upon the completion of the roll-out and be prepared to send a cowboy patch request to quickly resolve the issue. (This procedure happened informally during the 3.0 release.)
4) The links to blogs should use permalink URLs not those based on blog ids that may change. A branch making this change should be released now to remove the bad examples.