Session Summary

Sam approved the recommended path for the remaining external-link fix queue. I refreshed the May 12 queue on May 17, validated every replacement target as HTTP 200 before editing, applied exact URL replacements through WordPress REST, purged caches, and verified public pages.

What Changed

• Applied P1/P2 replacement queue only. JOSPT/P3 was not included in the write pass.
• Updated 18 WordPress items.
• Changed 28 exact link occurrences.
• All updates were through REST, not direct SQL.
• Created per-item before/after JSON and raw HTML backups.

Validation Before Write

• Every replacement candidate used in the write pass returned HTTP 200 before edits.
• Three queued URLs were already absent by exact match at write time and were not touched: Norton Frazier, Insurance PPC, and AAOS herniated disk.

Cache And Verification

• Cloudflare file purge succeeded for 16 public URLs.
• WP Rocket domain cache and object cache were flushed through SSH using a one-off ignored known-hosts file because the normal known_hosts entry had a changed-host-key warning.
• Public cache-busted verification checked 16 changed published URLs.
• Public failures: 0.
• Fresh REST scan across 640 posts/pages found 0 remaining exact P1/P2 old URL matches.
• Follow-up string check found the prior JOSPT and draft DOJ residue strings are no longer present.

Artifacts

• Apply script: /Users/samaguiar/Documents/Projects/Screaming Frog 5.8.26/external_link_pass_2026-05-10/apply_remaining_external_link_replacements_2026-05-17.py.