PAFOA Permalinks

[awkx]

I'm having difficulty making links-to-posts work correctly. When viewing a post, there are two displayed links back to the post, shown below:

However, the "permalink" URL contains an explicit page number, and it fails for users who display a different number of posts per page (option in User CP).

UPDATE: The "[post]" tag can be used to create a robust link. It is used like this: "[post=535973]Time Paradox![/post]".

Now, it turns out that you can make a link that works for everybody by manually editing the URL so that it looks like this:
__________www.pafoa.org/forum/political-138/18978-sec...burg-post-248750.html
instead of
__________www.pafoa.org/forum/political-138/18978-sec...burg-page-3.html#post248750
But there are two problems with this. First, manual editing is obviously a PITA. Second, the displayed link does not automatically include the thread title by default. Now, maybe I'm doing it wrong. (In which case, I would be glad to hear how to do it right.) But otherwise, it seems that this is bug in the PAFOA vBulletin system.

I don't know how many people changed their settings to display more than the default 10 posts/page. I changed mine to show 40 posts/page, and I find this to be very useful in reading long threads. But if only a few people use this option, then we who do use it can just manually universalize any links we give, and similarly we can manually frob the links posted by others before following them.

(There is also the "#n"-style link, but this displays the post in isolation, and it also centers all the text (although I think the centering might be an HTML/CSS bug).)


Try it! Active links:

• permalink(40 posts/page): http://www.pafoa.org/forum/political...tml#post248750
• permalink(10 posts/page): http://www.pafoa.org/forum/political...tml#post248750
• permalink(univerally valid): http://www.pafoa.org/forum/political...st-248750.html
• "#n"-style: http://www.pafoa.org/forum/248750-post-82.html

[soberbyker]

I too, like to display 40 posts per page and have found the perma links didn't work. What I do is just hit the permalink button anyway and then after the link type something like "post # 93" to direct you to the exact post I'm pointing to, knowing the permalink won't work for some folks.

Bill

[awkx]

If anyone's interested, here's a webpage script to automatically universalize PAFOA permalinks: http://awkx.pa.googlepages.com/PafoaPermalinkFix.html

Usage: Paste an URL, or an entire post, or someone else's URL that you want to follow. It will automatically convert any PAFOA permalinks to a version that works universally. Then click in the Output box, press Ctrl+A to select all, then Ctrl+C to copy.

Hopefully DanP or Doug will be able to fix how the PAFOA website handles permalinks soon, but if not, then the above script might be useful. (And if they do fix permalinks soon, I still needed to brush up on my JavaScript/RegEx skills. )

EDIT: This post is deprecated by the post below.

[awkx]

Update: The "[post]" tag can be used to make a link that works regardless of the "Posts Per Page" setting of the viewer. For example, to make a link to post #535973, one might type:

[post=535973]Time Paradox![/post]

The post number is the number at the end of the "Permalink" URL (it immediately follows the word "post" at the end of the URL). For example, if the Permalink URL is "http://forum.pafoa.org/supp...tings.html#post535973", then the post number is 535973.

If you're using the 40 posts/page setting, then your permalinks (to posts after the 10th post of a thread) won't work for visitors to PAFOA. To make a link to a PAFOA post that works for everyone, use something like: "http://forum.pafoa.org/showthread.php?p=535973"

To quickly grab the post number: (1) right-click the Permalink of the post () and copy the link location (URL), (2) paste the URL somewhere, and (3) select and copy the post number from the end of the URL.