Permalink?

[Paracelsus]

What is this 'permalink' notation I see beside the post #?

This appears to be a new feature.

[Roy Batty]

Seems to be a bit more of a stable & permanent link to a post than before:

Permalink-type urls? - vBulletin FAQ Forums

& here:

Permalink - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[NEOWatcher]

Originally Posted by Roy Batty

Seems to be a bit more of a stable & permanent link to a post than before:

Well; that's all good and well, so why keep the old way?

[Roy Batty]

Originally Posted by NEOWatcher

Well; that's all good and well, so why keep the old way?

Dunno!

[Fraser]

I'm installing a new application that makes the forum more friendly for search engines. It gives all the pages better HTML names, instead of just post ID numbers.

[Roy Batty]

Originally Posted by Fraser

I'm installing a new application that makes the forum more friendly for search engines. It gives all the pages better HTML names, instead of just post ID numbers.

Hey & is that also responsible for turning all the basic urls into proper names without manually adding [ url=xxx ] yyy [ /url ] coding, too? I just noticed it on the links I gave above. I.e I just typed the urls & it came up with these names:

Bad Astronomy Blog
Universe Today

Neat!

[Jim]

Clicking the number will call up that one post; clicking permalink will call up that post in context (with the before and after posts as well).

If you want to link to just that post (f'rinstance, "ToSeeked" or "Here's the answer."), click on the number. If you want to allow scrolling through the rest of the thread, click on "permalink."

[Roy Batty]

Originally Posted by Jim

Clicking the number will call up that one post; clicking permalink will call up that post in context (with the before and after posts as well).

If you want to link to just that post (f'rinstance, "ToSeeked" or "Here's the answer."), click on the number. If you want to allow scrolling through the rest of the thread, click on "permalink."

Gotcha. That's a useful feature! but I reckon it could be combined so that the number is just the permalink as NeoWatcher queried

[Fraser]

Originally Posted by Roy Batty

Hey & is that also responsible for turning all the basic urls into proper names without manually adding [ url=xxx ] yyy [ /url ] coding, too? I just noticed it on the links I gave above. I.e I just typed the urls & it came up with these names:

Bad Astronomy Blog
Universe Today

Neat!

That's right, it's changing the URLs into human readable versions. And doing a bunch of other things as well. It's mainly designed to help Google, etc understand which is the correct URL for a page on the forum.

[Roy Batty]

Originally Posted by Fraser

That's right, it's changing the URLs into human readable versions. And doing a bunch of other things as well. It's mainly designed to help Google, etc understand which is the correct URL for a page on the forum.

Fantastic! (sorry, been re-watching to much early new Who )

[Whirlpool]

Kinda curious too when I saw that permalink . But after reading its purpose , it's COOL!

Thanks Fraser.

[01101001]

See article -- in which the new "smart" URL software prevented me from creating a label "Darwin" linked to a Wikipedia article. For some reason, it replaced the "Darwin" with "Domain Name Registration, E-mail, Web Hosting" and replaced the Wikipedia URL I supplied with link to domain Darwin. Ugly.

===

Experiments indicate when I build a URL tag, if the text label I choose also appears in the URL, then the software decides to use the text label as the URL and substitute "Domain Name Registration, E-mail, Web Hosting" for the label.

PHP Code:

[URL=http://www.example.com]EEEEEEE[/URL] -- but with EEEEEEE replaced by example


is wrongly transformed into

PHP Code:

[url=http://example]Domain Name Registration, E-mail, Web Hosting[/url]


[hhEb09'1]

Hey cool let me try
Domain Name Registration, E-mail, Web Hosting

PS: wow it substitutes it when the post is saved! I did not type in the words "Domain Name Registration, E-mail, Web Hosting"

[Roy Batty]

Urg, nasty... isn't there a way for this feature to only apply to plain urls & not to BBcoded ones?
I mean if I go to the trouble of specifying the code with label then I wouldn't expect it to be messed with.

[Fraser]

Okay, that's very bad.

[Fraser]

Okay, now I understand. If you put in a link to another site, the software will retrieve the title from the page, and replace your URL with that version. So, we don't like this feature?

I see. No matter what the title of the target page is, you get the same stupid link text.

[Fraser]

Testing.

http://www.universetoday.com

[Fraser]

Okay, it's turned off.

[01101001]

Originally Posted by Fraser

Okay, it's turned off.

I think that's for the best. It's not a rare circumstance it was messing up.

Generally, I liked the feature. But, substituting a clearly bogus text label and, as a bonus in this case of a label that matches part of a provided URL, breaking the link, is a bit much.

Earlier I had struggled with a frustrating instance or two of the feature's thinking it was wiser than I, altering the text label I had provided. At least then it didn't break the link, and caused no real harm.

If you want to pursue it with the developer, I think maybe Roy Batty has it: suggest that they do not muck with labels or URLs if they are already provided. It should never go inside an existing tag to change a URL. Also, they should respect PHP tagged text, and leave it alone.

Thanks for checking.

[01101001]

I think I'm seeing a problem with the software that does more readable URLs.

From the Currently Active Users, the ! ! ! link is to

PHP Code:

http://www.bautforum.com/members/.html


From the members list, several of the exclamation-mark names link to:

PHP Code:

http://www.bautforum.com/members/-.html


which yields member §åìñ†.

(First noted in article here.)

[01101001]

Originally Posted by Fraser

That's right, it's changing the URLs into human readable versions. And doing a bunch of other things as well. It's mainly designed to help Google, etc understand which is the correct URL for a page on the forum.

Is it what's messing with the URLs I take the trouble to specify? I do wish that would stop.

For instance in topic Mouse Arrow Mystery Solved:

I go to the trouble of carefully crafting a readable:

===

Topic How your mouse arrow really works..

===

Yet when I go to edit that, I see my effort gone:

===

Topic [url]http://www.bautforum.com/off-topic-babbling/61565-how-your-mouse-arrow-really-works.html[/url]

===

And if I submitted, I think the URL would become unreadable. No. Just tried it. The URL stayed elegant. But the preview looked horribly wrong. You can't trust the preview. Yuck.

[01101001]

Originally Posted by 01101001

Is it what's messing with the URLs I take the trouble to specify? I do wish that would stop.

For instance in topic Mouse Arrow Mystery Solved:

I go to the trouble of carefully crafting a readable:

===

Topic How your mouse arrow really works..

===

Yet when I go to edit that, I see my effort gone:

===

Topic [url]http://www.bautforum.com/off-topic-babbling/61565-how-your-mouse-arrow-really-works.html[/url]

===

And if I submitted, I think the URL would become unreadable. No. Just tried it. The URL stayed elegant. But the preview looked horribly wrong. You can't trust the preview. Yuck.

I just quoted all of that to see what it would do. Once again, URLs look OK when submitted.

I'm glad I tried to document it. I've been correcting URLs that looked mangled when editing. Now, I'll just cross my fingers and hope for the best.

[Van Rijn]

I'm getting very tired of "first unread" taking me back to the first post about half the time, and I think that's permalink related too.

[01101001]

Originally Posted by Van Rijn

I'm getting very tired of "first unread" taking me back to the first post about half the time, and I think that's permalink related too.

I think Fraser likes what vBSEO has to offer.

And, he will urge the makers to fix the many problems that come along for the ride.

Fraser, any hope? Permalinks that aren't permanent for everyone continue to be a hassle.

Me, I stopped using permalinks since I found out that members' articles/page-setting makes them unreliable. But, I'm sure many use them freely.