This came up after submitting a post …
Than I clicked on ‘shortcut’ and this came up
A short URL? Instead of forumosa.com/p/?694613 to see your post. This exciting feature will take your Forumosa user experience to a whole new level. 
No way to turn this off? No need for this new thingy … not for me …
[quote]Your message has been entered successfully.
(30 second wait)
Choose a shortcut name:
forumosa.com/p/?
Type a memorable shortcut
so you can easily share your post (min. 5 characters).
For example, instead of telling someone to go to
forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.php?p=xxxx#xxxx
you could simply write,
go to forumosa.com/p/?hypermegaglobal1
or forumosa.com/p/?top10steaks
Or ignore everything above and just click one of the links below to
VIEW YOUR MESSAGE RETURN TO THE FORUM SEE LATEST POSTS ON FORUMOSA REVIEW MOST UPDATED THREADS
[/quote]
Who wants to wait for 30 seconds after posting? Why would I want to click on one of the links?
Sorry, bp - I need the new thingy
Few people, this is why I put the links there
Goose Egg, do you REALLY REALLY need it? It really is a pain.
I don’t understand. What is so painful - a 30-second wait when you can instantly click on a link?
There are more links there to choose from, too
Just because you have to.
I don’t understand. What is so painful - a 30-second wait when you can instantly click on a link?
There are more links there to choose from, too[/quote]
Really, don’t make people do things when it’s not needed … I don’t want to click on links, before everything was OK, 5 seconds is fine but 30 … I can run around the house every time I post or take a dump …
There used to links there saying “view you message” etc… noone complained then. But there were less options and it was simpler to click past. Maybe is could have less options or a shorter timeout ?
I never used the links to view my own message or to go to the page … I already knew what I posted … I just waited for the auto click through …
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[Smart-ass remark about a Forumosan removed by Goose Egg - see Temp Forum for details]
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I think that page Belgian Pie is talking about is both ugly and confusing. One can do what exactly with that feature? Why is it so plain looking too?
[quote] Type a memorable shortcut
so you can easily share your post [/quote]
Now why would I want to spend time making up a senseless memorable shortcut to easily share my posts?
I already share my posts … without a shortcut … and people read them … without a memorable shortcut …
Alas, not a terribly convincing argument. Or maybe too deep for me to comprehend. Try again, I’ll look out for reply.
[quote=“belgian pie”][quote] Type a memorable shortcut
so you can easily share your post [/quote]
Now why would I want to spend time making up a senseless memorable shortcut to easily share my posts?
I already share my posts … without a shortcut … and people read them … without a memorable shortcut …[/quote]
I’m sorry that this seems to bother you so much. I suggest that as soon as this message comes up to confirm that your message has been added to the thread, you simply click on the middle link (it brings up the latest posts)
You are not required to create a shorter URL for your post. So simply ignore that part and go on to the rest of the website.
“Warning: fsockopen:” at the top of the page is FAR more irritating!
Fair enough, I’ll try to explain it here and I dare you to propose a more effective way to present it. If you can make it more intuitive, we can probably drop the wait time to less than 30 seconds.
The feature does the same thing that www.tinyURL.com does - it allows you to shorten the URL of a webpage. For discussion forums like ours, we use long URLs that aren’t very obvious to the listener or reader - Forumosa - Taiwan's largest and most active Taiwan-oriented global online community in English isn’t the kind of thing that one would like to say to someone to type out in their web browser.
Btw, if you haven’t figured it out already, you can go to www.forumosa.com/p to create your own tinyURL like URLs.
Some of us are like Belgian Pie and have no need for this service. They would normally jump directly to links offered below to go about their business on the website
Some are like me, and could use a more meaningful web address when directing people to posts via paper bookmarks, offline advertising - flyers and Taiwanease magazine, radio (podcasts). I’m not crazy that what we have right now still requires that question mark. I’ll see about removing that so that one simply has to say “Forumosa - Taiwan's largest and most active Taiwan-oriented global online community in English”
It seems natural to stick an advertisement there instead. So don’t be surprised if I change it to a commercial space. For now, I’m pretty happy that I managed to figure out how to make more use of the page.
I see ‘Warning:fsockopen()’
Anyone know what an fsock is?
I agree!
And I do not believe it is related to the changes made from this modification (the error only appeared this afternoon, and I added the Short URL thingie last night)
Haven’t identified where this error is coming from tho
[quote=“Buttercup”]Anyone know what an fsock is?[/quote]They keep your ffeet warm.
I agree!
And I do not believe it is related to the changes made from this modification (the error only appeared this afternoon, and I added the Short URL thingie last night)
Haven’t identified where this error is coming from tho[/quote]
I figured out the problem - it’s from our web blog at www.forumosa.org
The Blog is hosted on a separate server - DreamHost. THAT server is down right now which means the RSS feed from forumosa.org is also down.
It should be back up by 3am PST (what time is that here?) I have temporarily disabled the code that brings in the RSS Feed from our Blog. I’ll fix it later tonight