Closed Broken links?

Simon Hampel

Simon Hampel

Administrator
Staff member
20+ year member
If you come across threads with broken links to other threads/pages/photos/etc from ZooChat, please paste the URLs here and I'll investigate.

I haven't yet finished putting in all the redirects for the old URLs so that they redirect to the new ones.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
TeaLovingDave said:
Permalinks to specific posts seem to work differently now, so my trip report indexes are all dead-linked. For instance, in my Berlin index the first part of my review is linked thus:

https://www.zoochat.com/posts/community/761329

The post in question now has the following direct link:

The German Adventures Of A Tea-Loving Dave - April 2014
Click to expand...

Okay, this is one of the URLs that we can't automatically redirect for technical reasons - so if you have external links they will now be kind of broken (kind of because it will take you to the correct thread, but not to the correct post, because the number of posts per page is different between the two sites).

But what I have been able to do is do a global search and replace for links that look like the one you posted and rewrite it as something that will work with the new URL structure - as you can see, the first link in your post has now changed and when you click on it, it takes you to the same place that your send link does.

So any links to specific posts that were made on the forums will now work and take you to that specific post. But unfortunately, any external link (eg in an email or on another website) will not work unless they are changed at the source.

If you do need to change links, here's how to do it:

Code: 
http://www.zoochat.com/109/german-adventures-tea-loving-dave-april-358566/index5.html#post761329

... that last part with the number after the #post is the unique identifier of the post you want to link to, if you take that number and put it at the end of the following URL ...

Code: 
https://www.zoochat.com/community/posts/761329

... and it will magically work out the correct thread and post to link to.
 
I decided to look at my Australia trip thread just to see how link redirects had been handled, and some very odd things have happened. All of the links are broken, and in some of the posts, everything beyond the first hyperlink has disappeared.

For example, just taking a random page here: Trip to Australia – June and July 2016 an example of a post where everything is there but the links are broken is post #169 here: Trip to Australia – June and July 2016 and a post where all of the text below the first hyperlink has disappeared is #162 here: Trip to Australia – June and July 2016
All of the posts where the text beyond the first hyperlink has disappeared say 'Last edited by a moderator: Today at 8:47 AM'
 
Flag up all such losses of text here and I can revert the edit and hence restore your text :) as I have just done for the one you just posted.
 
 
LaughingDove said:
I decided to look at my Australia trip thread just to see how link redirects had been handled, and some very odd things have happened. All of the links are broken, and in some of the posts, everything beyond the first hyperlink has disappeared.

For example, just taking a random page here: Trip to Australia – June and July 2016 an example of a post where everything is there but the links are broken is post #169 here: Trip to Australia – June and July 2016 and a post where all of the text below the first hyperlink has disappeared is #162 here: Trip to Australia – June and July 2016
All of the posts where the text beyond the first hyperlink has disappeared say 'Last edited by a moderator: Today at 8:47 AM'
Click to expand...

I took a backup of the database just before I did the search and replace, so I'll restore that to a test site and compare the posts to see what broke. Will come up with a fix.
 
Simon Hampel said:
I took a backup of the database just before I did the search and replace, so I'll restore that to a test site and compare the posts to see what broke. Will come up with a fix.
Click to expand...

Judging by the time of the edit mentioned by LaughingDove which is present on all the curtailed posts, I think the error is related to the global search and replace you performed earlier, per the following quote:

Simon Hampel said:
But what I have been able to do is do a global search and replace for links that look like the one you posted and rewrite it as something that will work with the new URL structure
Click to expand...
 
Simon Hampel said:
I took a backup of the database just before I did the search and replace, so I'll restore that to a test site and compare the posts to see what broke. Will come up with a fix.
Click to expand...

It seems that TLD has fixed them all anyway (Thanks!) and undone whatever edits broke them so it doesn't seem to be a major issue.
 
LaughingDove said:
It seems that TLD has fixed them all anyway (Thanks!) and undone whatever edits broke them so it doesn't seem to be a major issue.
Click to expand...

Yes, except it was a global search/replace so there will likely be other posts which are broken now too - so I still need to check.
 
LaughingDove said:
What I have noticed is that all links to pictures on ZooChat as well as to the galleries themselves have broken.

Here is what the broken links to pictures are like: https://www.zoochat.com/community/threads/452860/ whilst the new working link is like this: Sign About Zoo-wide Wifi | ZooChat

And similarly a broken gallery link: https://www.zoochat.com/community/gallery/australia-wildlife/ and the new link to the same gallery: Australia - Wildlife - Photo Galleries | ZooChat
Click to expand...

I've spent the day working on making all those old links work again. Please do let me know if you find any links which are still not working.

I still have to do a few changes to some links to images (to the actual image file rather than the gallery entry) and also fix the search/replace things that got broken earlier.
 
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