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From: Retro Guy <retroguy@novabbs.org>
Newsgroups: news.admin.peering
Subject: Re: Request Nova BBS add easier-to-remember search URL links for Usenet article lookups
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2024 20:34:21 -0700
Organization: Rocksolid Light
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On Tue, 19 Mar 2024 21:07:59 -0500, Grant Taylor wrote:

> 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.

Yes, it's pretty simple to do with the web server, but if I were to do this
I will be writing changes into the website code. That's how I'm doing other
tasks (rewriting url when groups are moved by admin to another section,
accessing an article by mid, etc.) I prefer the software can handle this
stuff on it's own.
 
>> 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

Good idea.

>> 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.

No need for permalinks, I would just create a link to the article as one
already exists. I would just make that link easy to copy to the clipboard
as I do with mid.