Permalink related question

Chromaniac

Well-known member
The permalinks that are attached to each post (on time stamp) are connected with their links relative to the thread at the moment.

And I assume these are provided to let user share links to individual posts in a thread.

In a large forum there would be cases when threads are merged/split/moved... these links shared at external sources might not remain accurate (though you might already be using redirects to their new position on the forum making the point of this thread invalid but still...).

My worthless suggestion is to link the permalinks with absolute links instead. These links are already used in the news feed section.

I am going to post sample links after posting this thread. I hope I have managed to explain my trivial point here!
 
We did originally do this, but in the spirit of optimising for the most common case, we changed it to use a link relative to the thread in which it resides.

Why?

Firstly, in most cases, posts won't be moved.

Secondly, and more importantly, if you viewing the page threads/permalink-related-question.3417 and a post contains a permalink to threads/permalink-related-question.3417/#post-51426, a search engine spidering your site will recognise that this is not a link to independent content, and will not follow that link. However, with posts/51426, the search engine can not know that, and you've wasted dozens of spider visits for every thread the search engine hits.

On balance, we felt that the second reason was far more important than the possibility of losing a post due to a merge or move.
 
well, we still have the post#Permalink for each post, so this is fine.

Probably I am just too dumb, but I still do not get why there is a Permalink for a date or time (on timestamp) ?
What happens when clicking on a Date-Permalink ? What does it give me ?
 
hmmm... I understand of having a Permalink for a specific post, which is logically to me.

I just do not understand the logic of having a Permalink for a timestamp....... this is confusing to me....... and I am not sure if other users would understand this ?
 
I just do not understand the logic of having a Permalink for a timestamp....... this is confusing to me....... and I am not sure if other users would understand this ?
Then they don't have to use it.
The fact that it exists won't affect them in the slightest.

Personally I prefer it to the # permalink as it is much easier to click on a long text link than 2/3 small characters.
 
Then they don't have to use it.
The fact that it exists won't affect them in the slightest.

Personally I prefer it to the # permalink as it is much easier to click on a long text link than 2/3 small characters.
This is the link to your post:
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/permalink-related-question.3417/#post-51860

What if these 3 threads got merged, what would happen to that link?
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/permalink-related-question.3417/
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/Silly-link-related-question.4517/
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/dont-understand-permalinks.3444/

:confused:
 
The link would break. As I said though, optimise for the common case. If you can't find the post, you can always replace threads/permalink-related-question.3417/# with posts/ to get http://xenforo.com/community/posts/51860 and that will find the post.
 
Linking the date as a permalink is a very common convention these days.

clicking on the date, the user does not see what is happening.
When I am clicking on a date, I would expect to see all threads from that date (day).

Having a click-able timestamp giving the same result as clicking on the post#Permalink is double-dipping.
Sorry, but I think it´s rather confusing. As clicking on a date I would expect something else than a Permalink for a specific post.
 
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