How to Display a url containing a fragment identifier on WebmasterWorld

[Dimitri]

---

System: The following 3 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/webmasterworld/4954245.htm [webmasterworld.com] by phranque - 5:52 pm on Jul 17, 2019 (utc -7)

---

It's off-topic, but talking about "tools" / "buttons", is it possible to create a link to a particular message? like url#anchor ?

[tangor]

At one time you could ... but since the redesign/updates that no longer works ... or it if does, it extremely inconsistent. Would be nice to right click on the message id, copy the link, then paste it elsewhere. :)

[phranque]

the hack that i use for displaying urls with fragment identifiers is to "unlink" the url by strategically inserting an empty style code tag in the url.
that makes it easy to cut-and-paste the complete url with fragment identifier
something like this:

https:[b ][/b ]//www.example.com/page#fragment-identifier

(spaces inserted for visibility)

[tangor]

Thanks for the heads up, phranque! Will try that out in the future!

[lucy24]

I thought Dimitri was asking how to link to a particular message in a Forums thread. I never did figure out how to do it any way but typing it in manually:
https:/[b ][/ b]/www.webmasterworld.com/webmasterworld/4955034.htm#msg4955025
=
https://www.webmasterworld.com/webmasterworld/4955034.htm#msg4955025

[Dimitri]

I thought Dimitri was asking how to link to a particular message in a Forums thread.

Yes, this is what I meant. Several times, I wanted to link to a particular post, and couldn't do it, ending in linking to the topic itself, which was less convenient.

Thanks for the tip about the invisible space :)

[Robert Charlton]

how to link to a particular message in a Forums thread

lucy24, your solution will work, but there's a pagination consideration as well... and it's only dependable if you're linking to the first page of a thread, and then only if the posts per page setting is the same at both ends of the "chain".

If the url is written, say, using 30 posts per thread, and the user has his/her preferences set to 25 posts per thread, there are several possible chances of failure.

a) the link will break after the first page...
...or, a variant of this
b) if the url is for the first page, but say, for the 28th post, there will be no 28th post on the pages seen by the user with the 25-post preference.

For me, this inability to link to a particular post is the main drawback of WebmasterWorld's platform, which I otherwise like quite a bit As I understand things, fixing it would require a horrendous amount of programming and would require that all users maintain the same pagination.

[Dimitri]

would require a horrendous amount of programming and would require that all users maintain the same pagination.

Not necessarily, let's say you have a topic URL :

/xxx-p.html

"xxx" topic number (or first message number), and "p" the page number.

if you want to reach message yyy

/xxx.html?m=yyy

then the script which processes the request finds on which page the yyy message appears using the pagination option of the user and do a redirect like

/xxx-p.html?#yyy

or again easier would be to allow be

/yyy.html the script process the request redirects to /xxx-p.html#yyy

[tangor]

fixing it would require a horrendous amount of programming

For volunteers that's asking a lot. As I noted earlier, it was once possible, but the changes made over the last 18 months or so (which improved the site tremendously!) kinda broke that link possibility ... which was never 100% in the first place ... Robert ... thanks for the insight on pagination settings as that explain quite a lot!

Fortunately, linking to the thread still works perfectly well and in most cases is sufficient for horseshoes and in the ball park. :)