Recommendation: Disable Live Links.

vultura

I have noticed a few people complain of posting links to bargains, etc which shortly afterwards quit working. This is no doubt due to the increase in traffic at the site concerned, any webmaster checking the access logs can see the site referring the traffic and can change the url or even block access from the referring site.

I'd suggest that members disable live links (maybe type hxxp instead of http or add an extra character after .com, eg .com#) so the links can't be clicked directly, members would need to copy/paste and edit them to visit the site.

I am not familiar with vBulletin but I cannot see why the option to disable live links shouldn't exist within it, if not I am sure it could be applied as a "hack" to the vBulletin code fairly easily.

m00nie

if a bargain is there then 9/10 its a short lived one from grabit so will disapear soon anyway whether its from a live link from the forum or been pasted into someones browser

William_Dalladay-Elliott

vultura wrote:

I have noticed a few people complain of posting links to bargains, etc which shortly afterwards quit working. This is no doubt due to the increase in traffic at the site concerned, any webmaster checking the access logs can see the site referring the traffic and can change the url or even block access from the referring site.

I'd suggest that members disable live links (maybe type hxxp instead of http or add an extra character after .com, eg .com#) so the links can't be clicked directly, members would need to copy/paste and edit them to visit the site.

I am not familiar with vBulletin but I cannot see why the option to disable live links shouldn't exist within it, if not I am sure it could be applied as a "hack" to the vBulletin code fairly easily.

At the end of the day, that will still happen, since people will still go there - so disabling live links would be quite pointless.

On a second note, if you typed say https://www.example.com# it wouldn't cause any problems, since you're browser would just change the url to https://www.example.com/# You'd need to put a letter or number in.

vultura

Agreed, members will still visit those sites if interested, but the links won't be clicked by accident, nor will this site appear in the webmaster logs.