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1
sunsnapper
Web Links and My Links for Articles

I've seen a number of sites link their News articles to external web sites to "view the full story". I wonder if anyone has tried using either WebLinks or MyLinks to store these links, instead of just putting a URL to someone else's site directly in the News Story.

My thought is that one of the Links modules does link checking (automatically checks to make sure external links haven't broken over time). Perhaps I remember incorrectly. I see "Validate Links option" but, maybe this means "Approve".

Also, it would allow one to check the popularity of one external link over another, and track the number of users heading out to an external site.

Anyways, has anyone tried this approach? Success? Failure? Thoughts?
2
Per4orm
Re: Web Links and My Links for Articles

  • 2003/11/16 22:59

  • Per4orm

  • Documentation Writer

  • Posts: 145

  • Since: 2003/11/14


I think the reason people choose to do things this way, is that you can display a summary of the news item and archive it the same way you would any other article. It would be much harder I think to draw users attention to an external story if it was simply placed in the weblinks.
3
sunsnapper
Re: Web Links and My Links for Articles

Per4orm,
Absolutely right. I just meant managing the external links in a Link module. You would still use the same content module (News, WFSections, whatever) but at the end of the article...

instead of
http://externalnewssite.com/story?99

you would use
http://mywebsite.com/modules/mylinks/visit.php?lid=12345

Nothing changes in your content module. It's just now you would have the benefit of managed links. This would also let you do things like put the external site in a frame (already an option in the Links module I think) or have a redirect page that alerts the user they are leaving you for an external site. (Personally, I wouldn't do that, but, it's an option).

The big advantage would be managing links, particularly if the module periodically tests links to make sure they aren't dead. It would also let you track the response to a particular item.

Thanks for your post though. It means my first post wasn't clear enough.

4
mvandam
Re: Web Links and My Links for Articles

  • 2003/11/17 0:52

  • mvandam

  • Quite a regular

  • Posts: 253

  • Since: 2003/2/7 2


Instead of:

http://mywebsite.com/modules/mylinks/visit.php?lid=12345

you could instead use:

[ siteurl modules/mylinks/visit.php?lid=12345]Link to full story[/ siteurl] (remove spaces)

I think this is a great idea. Although I've never done this because it isn't as easy as I'd like, I always have thought it would be a good idea to store and refer to "long-lived" links this way. By "long-lived" I mean documents which are quite popular and will be around for a long time on the net. Mirrors having this document may come and go, but the links module can automatically alert you when it breaks and you can find a new one.

The best thing I like about it is for frequently used links. It means if an external URL breaks, you change it once in the links module, then ALL your forums/news/etc which refer to that link will be fixed automatically. The ability to track statistics, and maybe provide a frame around the external page also seem like good uses for this.
5
sunsnapper
Re: Web Links and My Links for Articles

Great mvandam. I still have few enough articles that it shouldn't be hard to go back and change my links... then make a habit of it going forward.

I just wanted to "run it up the flag pole" and see if it seemed like a completely nutty idea.

This is another instance where I thought the notion of the SuperModule that used to be discussed had real merit. The idea that everything is an item, and the "module" distinction becomes more a distinction of presentation or view. (sorry for the digression).

What I would really love is if there was some way to associate Related Links and Articles with one another... perhaps based on keywords.

But, in the short term, at least managing dead links will be handy, I think.

Thanks for your thoughts on this.
6
sunsnapper
Re: Web Links and My Links for Articles

Well, I have had second thoughts about this. I went ahead and added all my external links to news stories (not many to do) and updated to local links.

But, the only advantage I see is the ability to track how many people go to the external site. I didn't find an option that periodically checked for broken links (it let's users report broken links, but, it does not appear to test them on its own).

Using mvandam's suggestion and mod_rewrite, I did get it down to [ siteurl = /links/4 ]click here [ / siteurl]

Also, I wish the url format was something other than a link id. A format that included the true external URL would be nice I think. Example: http://www.mysite.com/modules/mylinks/visit.php?uid=http://www.externalsite.com/story5.html



But, I think I'll keep adding links to the database as I move forward, just in case a future version checks for broken links.
7
mvandam
Re: Web Links and My Links for Articles

  • 2004/3/16 19:34

  • mvandam

  • Quite a regular

  • Posts: 253

  • Since: 2003/2/7 2


Quote:

But, I think I'll keep adding links to the database as I move forward, just in case a future version checks for broken links.

Many links scripts and links modules for other CMS have facilities for checking links, so I would be surprised if this was not eventually added in XOOPS mylinks. Probably it would be worthwhile to post a feature request at dev.xoops.org
8
sunsnapper
Re: Web Links and My Links for Articles

Will do.

The other thing I wondered about was how search engine rankings would be affected by these kinds of "forwarding" links.

Off to add it to the feature request. I didn't find a place at dev for feature requests... so I just added it to the feature request board here.

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