Permalink?

On another forum I saw a nice little feature called permalink in the threads.

Is that over on vB.org?

Work ok?

 

Huh??? That is a built in feature of vbulletin. Hover your mouse over the post # in the thread. Such as your post is #1 - the one is in the upper right hand corner. That is the permalink.

 

I think he is talking about vBSEO which actually adds the word permalink.

vBulletin's link doesn't exactly lead to the thread though. It shows the post in a new window. Not difficult to change though. Just change the link from showpost.php to showthread.php.

I believe that showpost.php is going away in vBulletin 4 anyway. Not really sure why people wanted it as a feature years ago myself.

 

Does that mean we will no longer be able to link to a single post in vBulletin 4?

 

No, there are still other ways of linking to a single post. For example: [noparse]http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1737838[/noparse]

 

On at least one forum there are both the post numbers which brings up a view single post, and the word 'permalink' which loads the entire thread but will present the post of interest.

The view single post on that site is quite helpful when referencing a post in a long thread that takes a long time to load. Example would be a thread with many pictures hosted on photobucket. That tends to lend itself to share information while not suggesting to post a comment. People need to click on the thread name to load up the thread so it can be replied to (there is no reply button in view single post). In addition the ads on that site are not loaded which makes things much quicker.

Without the view single post feature some threads on that site would not work well at all and would be far to confusing for people. Those are reference threads where links are presented in each post, to other single posts. Sometimes they are nested so several single posts need to be opened to get to the information of interest.

For example "BIG THREAD" = BT, which is 1000 posts long

BT -> post number 1 -> links to #100, #200, #300, #400
BT -> post number 100 -> some information and links to #550, #698
BT -> post number 550 -> links to #888, #892, #924

If the view single post did not exist then the entire thread would load and it would make no sense because users would be presented with too much information (they would just scan the thread and eventually get lost).


The permalink on that site works quite well at referencing a post in a thread while inviting discussion. It loads up the entire thread while presenting the post of interest.


Right now on my forum only the view single post is available. When a thread is referenced I need to send a link to the thread with out the post referenced and say "the information of interest starts at post #42 of this thread".

Guess I'm asking for both the view single post and view post in thread features at the same time like that other site does. Or maybe there is some trick you could teach me so I can get the Showthread url which would bring up the entire thead but reference the post of interest.

Or this post is far too long and no one will read it :lol:

 

Abomination, that site must be using vBSEO. There are several options as to how to configure the showpost permalink and such with vBSEO.

Here, we have it disabled, because existence the showpost page results in duplicate content and some sites can be penalized (by Google, for example) for that. That's a big issue, and isn't the only instance in vBulletin. That's why vBSEO is so great - one of its main features is removing duplicate content and creating link canonicalization.

Here's a screenshot of the available options in regards to showpost in vBSEO:

View attachment 225

We are using the highlighted (third) option. I think the forum you are referring to is using the second option.
​

 

I think you are correct Nick, that site probably does use vBSEO but they are using the branding free options for that and vB.

Is there any way of manually creating the permalink version? From these examples it appears it is possible:

Here is the view single post version which is always available when viewing a post:

Code:

http://www.yoursite.com/forums/showpost.php?p=37953&postcount=39

Here is the permalink version:

Code:

http://www.yoursite.com/forums/showthread.php?p=37953#post37953

Another example:
View post which is always available:

Code:

http://www.yoursite.com/forums/showpost.php?p=37714&postcount=26

Permalink:

Code:

http://www.yoursite.com/forums/showthread.php?p=37714#post37714

So it does appear that doing the following will create a permalink from a view single post link:

• replace 'showpost' with 'showthread'
• replace '&postcount=___' with '#post(thread number)

Would that work?


It does work! not a clean solution but it will do for now.