Re: Request Nova BBS add easier-to-remember search URL links for Usenet article lookups

On 3/19/24 19:02, Andrew wrote:

I fully realize that the easy part is coming up with a URL.
The hard part is implementing and supporting it (I know).

This is a perfect example for something like mod_rewrite in Apache. Have Apache recognize something like:
    https://groups.novabbs.com/news.admin.peering
As a short cut for:
 https://www.novabbs.com/computers/article-flat.php?group=news.admin.peering
Make the computer do the work for you with little effort on your part.

No, I didn't mean that. I meant the same link above since I never search
more than one newsgroup at a time, so the link I was referring to was this:
  <https://news.novabbs.org/computers/thread.php?group=news.admin.peering>
 That's just not an intuitively easily remembered URL for most people.
This would be an intuitively easily remembered URL for most people:
  <https://news.novabbs.org/ng/news.admin.peering>
 Or maybe, since you're already using the question mark syntax,
it might be easier on you to continue using that question mark syntax.
  <https://news.novabbs.org/?ng=news.admin.peering>

Optionally, configure a search shortcut in your client where you type something like the following:
    novabbs news.admin.peering
And have it translate that to:
 https://www.novabbs.com/computers/article-flat.php?group=news.admin.peering

Ah. Thanks. Thanks for understanding. I agree it will create thousands of
permalinks that you might need to maintain, so I understand that the way I
did it with the Message-ID search to get a link to the article is possible.

Don't create thousands of permalinks.  That's a recipe for failure.  If you don't do something dynamic like mod_rewrite above, at least do something that's a database lookup.  There are plenty of ways to do this in many web servers.

I was just asking for the link to make it foolproof for those other people.

The universe is winning, the mice will always be smarter than the best mouse trap.  #HellIsExothermic

So I was only asking for the permalink feature for the dummies.
Thanks for understanding.

:-|

At this point in time, other than the narkive (which, bless David
Caveon's heart, just isn't there yet), you're our only salvation!

Please don't attack people, especially people that aren't in the conversation to defend themselves.
It's relatively easy to ask others to change what they are doing.  It's quite a bit more difficult to do it yourself.
So ... why don't you show us what you are doing on your server to make things easily accessible for others.
--
Grant. . . .