Link directly to a post
 

What it does:
This minor template change adds a nice little subsection symbol (?) right next to the post time, which is a url that can now either be clicked or copied, providing the ability for users to conveniently link directly to a post's anchor so you jump to a post within a thread, rather than opening its own window.

Rationale:
Although VB provides a nice way to open a single post in its own window by clicking the post number at the upper right of replies, this sometimes becomes inconvenient for subsequent surfers when someone has posted a link to a single post on mutiple page threads.

By default, to get the anchor location you must click the post number then copy the url at the upper right of the single-post window. This modification adds the anchor location as a url unobtrusively to every post so the post location can be obtained in one click, while retaining the single window link for the post number so folks immediately have both options.

Template Edits: 2; postbit and postbit_legacy

Code Additions:

1) In both templates find:

2) Directly BELOW add:

3) Done! :)

Thanks to liwo for posting the most recent fix :). This replaced the original code of:

...which apparently stopped working somewhere around VB 3.5.3.

Thanks .. simple but useful.
Clicked install.

Indeed. It's just one of those little things that's nice to have available. Prior to VB 3.5, if you clicked the post number and opened that post's window, the Thread: [thread title] link wouldn't take you to the post anchor at all, and you had to sift through the thread to find it. Try it on this board. 3.5 makes this a little easier but it's still helpful to have the anchor handy for copying without clicking anything.

i like.... not much else to say.... cheers

I already do this but I use the status icon as the anchor image. ;)

I kinda thought about that - or even using an additional small image, although this might be simpler because you're just adding a little code rather than replacing it, and it won't potentially conflict with something VB might link to the existing icon later. Your method obviously works just as well though.

Been meaning to tell you: That's a clever signature. :up:

I just used an old 3.0 hack I did for it.

Thanks for the kind words on the sig. It seems I've had that one forever. ;)

simple and useful ! thank you su much !
I pot it next to the post number :P

Exactly what I was looking for ... simple and perfect. Many thanks.

You're welcome. I've been considering adding an optional JS link that allows you to copy the link location directly to the clipboard, although Mozilla security settings means it doesn't work too well in Moz/FF without the enduser making some browser adjustments. Think I'll just leave it how it is for now :).

Simple mod m8 well done :)

I've noticed that this hack seems not to work. It installed without problem and inserts the appropriate link into posts. However, these links, with their extra reference markers, don't actually go to the appropriate post if the thread is longer than one page: if the message is is, for example, on the second page of a thread, the link will simply take you to the first page of the thread.

This seems a very serious problem; on a board with active posters and thus long threads, it makes it essentially useless.

Any fix?

Hmm, good catch. I'll track it down.

Have you made any progress on this? It's becoming somewhat pressing, since my users are using the links it generates as hyperlinks in their posts, and as those links don't work properly (cf. my comments above), messages are being posted across the system that include bad links. It's getting to the point where I'm really going to need to uninstall the hack if this can't be sorted.

But I do hope you'll get a fix out, though, as I quite like the functionality!

No, haven't had the chance yet. And I'm out the door right now. All I know is, it was working all the way through 3.5.2. One of the upgrades changed something in the way multiple pages are displayed, so regardless what the fix is, your members' broken urls are likely to stay that way. My recommendation is to uninstall it for now. I'll look at it this evening and see if it's resolvable.

Thanks for this. I've uninstalled the hack and clicked ::uninstall:: above for the time being. I'll be keeping an eye on this thread, though, waiting to see if you can come up with a fix for this bug, and if so will look forward to re-installing.

It's a good hack, but with this bug it`s useless for me :( Do you think it's possible to fix it?

EDIT: Ok, it's fixed by liwo :)

A fix for this is actually quite simple. Just use this code. (I changed the t=$thread[threadid] to p=$post[postid], so vB finds the thread and the correct page by the postnumber)

Wow, thanks for that liwo. I've been getting up every day at 3:30am to get to work, then doing night class so haven't had the chance to look. Don't happen to know if your fix works on VB 3.6 do you? I haven't had time to install a test board yet.

We have just test it on vB 3.5