08 March 2011

Spring Cleaning on Blogs

I know it's not yet spring, but being a perfect spring day makes it a good time to look at 'Blogs I Follow', listed under my profile to the right. I last looked at the entire list a year ago in Good Blogs Gone. Starting with '65 Blogs', I deleted the following for the reasons given...

...then added about the same number, ending up with '63 Blogs'. While I'm on the subject of blogs, I can't figure out how to link individual posts from SPRAGGETT ON CHESS. As you might expect from a former World Championship candidate, it's one of the best blogs around, but the individual posts are unlinkable. Do you know a workaround?

8 comments:

King and Pawn said...

Just looked at Spraggett's blog, and the usual approach of clicking on the title of the blog post and copying the URL seemed to work. Is the problem that the URL expires after a while?

I also humbly sumbit my new-ish blog, King and Pawn, in the adult improving player genre.

I'm adding this blog to my list and subscriptions, keep up the good content!

rockyrook said...

clicking on the post title link displays the unique url in the address bar. I did that and copied the address in a new browser and it worked - took me directly to the page.

Steve in TN said...

The Western Chess owner, John Hillery, passed away last year.

Mark Weeks said...

King and Pawn, Rocky - If you look at the URL for a post, you'll see that it is anchored on the monthly archive for that post. That means it works as long as the post is on the first page of that month's archive. Once a post slips to the second page, the URL no longer works.

Try the same thing using the first post on the second page. Since GM Spraggett typically blogs once or twice a day, most of his posts slip quickly to the second page of the archive or deeper. - Mark

rockyrook said...

Just playing around with it a bit ... looks like you can't link to a unique post. But as you said, you link to the monthly archive page followed by a unique post ID number.

ie http://kevinspraggett.blogspot.com/2009_10_01_archive.html#2084614333740177732 <-- this link should take you to "Friday's tactics training"

He has a blog archive drop-down menu to the top left of his blog.

You may already know all this, and if you do, sorry for rehashing it. But to me, that's what it looks like you have to do.

Unknown said...

check my blog out (I link to and read yours): adamporth.blogspot.com

Mark Weeks said...

Rocky - Re 'You may already know all this, and if you do, sorry for rehashing it', in fact, I do know it. I didn't go into a long explanation on my original post because (1) my frustration was not the main point of the post, but it's something which has been bugging me for a while; and (2) I wasn't sure anyone would be interested. I'm still bugged and there's some interest, so I'll explain in more detail.

Your example on 'Friday's tactics training' works because that post (dated 'October 30, 2009') was one of the last posts for that month and is on the first page of that month's archive. If you go to the second page and look at one of the posts, the link no longer works. Here's an example, the first post on the second page...

Thursday's tactics training (dated 'October 29, 2009')
http://kevinspraggett.blogspot.com/2009_10_01_archive.html#7343978853765164536

...If you click on that link or try copying it to your browser's address bar, you go to the first page of that archive. You won't find the post, because it's on the second page.

Similarly, here's a post from the current month (dated 'March 10, 2011') that I bookmarked because it has a few details about the current zonal cycle, a subject that I track on my World Championship blog...

The Zonal Rush: that familiar smell in the air...
http://kevinspraggett.blogspot.com/2011_03_01_archive.html#2376503071109449102

...That link no longer works because the post has slipped to the third(!) page of the archive. If I want to reread the post I have to go through the archive page by page looking for the title. There is no way (that I know of) to link to the post directly.

This problem isn't just a glitch for bookmarks. It also prevents the search engines from working properly. Try searching on the phrase "Thursday's tactics training" and you should see what I mean. To sum it up, a great chess blog is inaccessible. - Mark

Mark Weeks said...

Re GM Spraggett's blog, something changed during the past month to make the links work. The example in my previous comment now works as you would expect...

The Zonal Rush: that familiar smell in the air...
http://kevinspraggett.blogspot.com/2011/03/zonal-rush-that-familiar-smell-in-air.html

...and the posts are found by search engines. There is still a small glitch: when you click a link, the page opens near the bottom, but I can live with that. Google returns over 2000 posts on the blog, so there's a lot of old material to review. Thank you, GM Spraggett! - Mark