Is there some way that we can have dates displayed in the international dd-mmm-yyyy format? The U.S. mm-dd-yy format is very confusing for those of us who are unaccustomed to it.

I keep a record of all my posts in a spreadsheet along with the link to each post. Unlike at the BABB, the link taken from the top right (reply number) in a post only presents me with the single post and no way to negotiate anywhere else -- only the option to close the page. At the BABB the link would take me to the exact post but it was displayed on a page of other posts, exactly the same as when viewing a thread the normal way.

Am I doing something wrong? The FAQs don't seem to mention this problem. Is there a better way to record links? Such as the link to the appropriate page in a thread, plus the reply number?

I'll fix that... sec.

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Fraser Cain
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Universe Today - Free space news delivered by email every weekday.

[nit-picking]
Uhm, the international date format would be (according to ISO 8601): YYYY-MM-DD.
[/nit-picking]

I went with the Pangalactic date setting.

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Fraser Cain
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Universe Today - Free space news delivered by email every weekday.

Thanks, Fraser. It is certainly much better, whatever date system is used, to have the month spelt out. I initially thought there was an strange bug here, because the very first thing I did was put my birthdate in my profile, then when I looked at a few posts it said up the top that I had last visited on my last birthday, 9/3/2005. It took quite a while before I understoood that it meant September 3.

Any hints about links to posts (second topic of my opening post)? I'm still getting the single post and discovered that the thread title at top right drops me back at the opening post, but not to the post originally linked to (if you can follow that.) Is there some way, same as we could do it at the BABB, that we can link to a particular post in a way that they can also see the surrounding posts and the rest of the thread?

E.g. Here's a link to one of my posts (it's the link obtained from the reply number at top right):
Apollo Astronauts - Joking Around

This is the solution I always try to use.

I usually interpret X/Y/Z to mean X is the month and Y is the day, whereas for X.Y.Z I take X to be the day and Y to be the month. I wouldn't be surprised if date conventions in some countries don't correspond to either of these two. And sometimes people from another country are aware of the date convention where I live (US), and decide to help me out by writing things like MM.DD.YY, which I will inevitably misinterpret if 1<=DD<=12 :-)

I'm not sure I can implement your second request. You might want to browse all the posts that you've made and they should maintain links directly to them.

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Fraser Cain
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Universe Today - Free space news delivered by email every weekday.

At the top right of the post window is the thread title. This is a link to the threadThe board allready has a link to all posts by a user and a link to all threads started by a user. I'm not sure what you are aiming for but dont those links provide you with what you need?

What we're looking for is a way to link directly to a specific post within a thread, and still be able to view the entire thread on that page. Kind of like an anchor link on a text page.

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No, I understand that. And every post in a thread does have its own anchor link; however, I'm not sure there's a page that has these direct links in a way that lets you easily bring them into a spreadsheet.

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Fraser Cain
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Universe Today - Free space news delivered by email every weekday.

There is a way but its clumsy. However I've forgotten how

Whilst I try to get my brain in order here's a way to link to the page containing the post you've specified. Its also clumsy, but it works. For closed threads there's a better way, however this method works for both open and closed threads.

Using Post 65 in the Introduce Yourself! thread as an example

1) Get the posts ID number, one way to get it is too look at the posts direct link (http://www.bautforum.com/showpost.php?]p=545023&postcount=65) In this case its 545023

2) Then add it twice to the following URL http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?p=xxxxxx&postxxxxxx Replacing the xxxxxx

I'm going to see if drinking more Stella Artois helps my recollection.

Edit: See this post for a succesful method

Using Post 65 in the Introduce Yourself! thread as an example

1) Get the posts ID number, one way to get it is too look at the posts direct link (http://www.bautforum.com/showpost.php?p=545023&postcount=65) In this case its 545023

2) Then add it to the following URL http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?p=xxxxxx Replacing the xxxxxx with the post ID

And while we're at it, how about we can have a proper time display without the silly AM/PM stuff? </snob>

I mean, this board lets us choose timezone, automatic DST, even the day that is start of week, but we can't configure something as basic as a 24 hour clock? Is that option somehow disabled?

You can choose it in your control panel.

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Fraser Cain
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Universe Today - Free space news delivered by email every weekday.

A 24 hour clock? No, I can't... Either I'm blind, that option does not exist in vBulletin (which would be rather pathetic at version >3) or that option is somehow administratively disabled. In the date&time options I can select timezone, DST and start of week. I can't find a 24 hour clock option.

I'd like to second that request, if it is possible. Could there be some admin option to allow users to set "advanced date options"?

I'm wrong. I can set it globally, but I don't think users can define it personally. It might be an option with vBulletin 3.5, which is still a beta.

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Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today - Free space news delivered by email every weekday.

Sorry, I've been away a few days. No, I'm not looking for a way to get stuff into the spreadsheet -- that's a piece of cake, just copying and pasting, except for when the date is shown as "Today" instead of the actual date. That's a nuisance -- is there an option personally to set it to the actual date?

What I was asking for in my first post was what The Supreme Canuck said: "What we're looking for is a way to link directly to a specific post within a thread, and still be able to view the entire thread on that page."

I can see far more use for that feature than the single-post-and-link-to-first post-in-the-thread system that works now. That is slow and very awkward -- the old BABB system was much better.

Let's say I'm on another bulletin board or emailing someone and want to refer to an interesting post here that is not the first post in the thread. I want to be able to give people a link which shows the particular post and the entire page that it's on. The view they have is identical to what we get when we browse a thread and they can move around just the same.

It seems that, short of following up Sleepy's suggestion, the only way we can do this is give the link to the page concerned and tell the other person to page down to reply No. xx. Messy, confusing and nothing like as simple as the BABB.

Fraser: Sleepy's posts show one difference: "showpost" vs "showthread". Is that something you could change globally?

Regarding the requests for a 24-hour clock, I much prefer am/pm times and not 24-hour figures, just as I prefer d-mmm-yyyy dates. It's a personal thing and we all have our own preferences.

Using Post 65 in the Introduce Yourself! thread as an example

1) Get the posts ID number, one way to get it is to look at the posts direct link:
http://www.bautforum.com/showpost.php?p=545023&postcount=65 In this case its 545023

2) Then add it twice to the following URL http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?p=xxxxxx#postxxxxxx Replacing the xxxxxx

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