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

Andrew wrote:

Retro Guy wrote on Wed, 20 Mar 2024 14:57:27 +0000 :

The above task is complete. There is now a 'copy link' to click to copy link to clipboard in each message's header.
Please let me know what I broke while adding this :)

Ah. Perfect. Thank you. For the dummies.
Since "No good deed ever goes unpunished!", here's what I'll try.

<snip>

1. So, let's go to the Android newsgroup NovaBBS URL
   <https://www.novabbs.com/computers/thread.php?group=comp.mobile.android>
2. Tap the convenient "Search" button.
   (I had expected the URL to change, but it didn't change.)
3. Take the default of "Body" (but it's nice to see the others).
4. Type in the "Search terms" field (does it take regex perhaps?)
   first-order effect
5. Press "Search"
   (Again, I had expected the URL to change, but it didn't change from
    https://www.novabbs.com/computers/search.php)
6. Drat. I know that's wrong but it said
   "0 matching articles found"
Hmmm... I had never intended to test how far back it goes, so let me

This particular site (www.novabbs.com) goes back 3 years, or 100,000 messages per group, whichever comes first. Users should please remember that www.novabbs.com is not an archive, and is not meant to be. It's also not meant to be a google groups clone.
<snip>

In addition, I pressed the "copy mid" link whose results can
be pasted into various MID lookup engines on the net.
 <http://al.howardknight.net/>
 <http://news.chmurka.net/mid.php>
 <http://usenet.ovh/index.php?article=ual>
 <https://www.novabbs.com/SEARCH/search_nocem.php>
 etc.

1. HowardKnight worked as expected to provide a link to the article.
   <http://al.howardknight.net/?STYPE=msgid&MSGI=%3CMPG.406228b7abad68fc9902c6%40news.individual.net%3E>
2. Chmurka repeatedly failed without any display of why it failed.
3. OVH worked to display the article but no link to it was provided.
   So OVH failed in effect.
4. NovaBBS said "Message-ID not found in NoCeM messages"
   (which is true, but then NovaBBS provided a link to the article)
   <https://www.novabbs.com/SEARCH/search_nocem.php?d=%3CMPG.406228b7abad68fc9902c6%40news.individual.net%3E>

I've added a 'Just find article' button to that site (www.novabbs.com/SEARCH/search_nocem.php) that simply tries to find the article and display it.

I'd say it's almost perfect, the only extremely minor thing is that a dummy
can't tell there are two links (copy mid copy link) which are right next to
each other, since only spaces separate them so maybe a "comma" would help
dummies (e.g., copy mid, copy link) so that they know it's two links.

It's ok the way it is. People will figure it out, or not.
--
Retro Guy