Forum: Lost Stories

This link goes to the "more info" page of that story - and it already has the link to the reviews.

Why? Once you get to the story page you have pretty much decided to read the story.

Once you get to the story page you have pretty much decided to read the story

...and have registered a download of it.

ETA: which is why I prefer to post a crafted search, which takes a bit more effort:

- Advanced Search
- Paste/type story name
- Paste/type author name
- Perform search (and verify you've got it right, and a single result)
- Copy one of the column sort links from the search (not the browser address bar URL, as that just gives you an empty search)
- Post that link in the forum

(unless I'm going for a fast first response)

Yup, I'm basic. There are a few stories where author+title is not enough to uniquely identify a story, but they're of the style Storyname, Storyname part 2 etc. where getting multiple search results is reasonable; a premier membership would allow search options to be used to uniquely identify just one, but I suspect that the premier options built into such a search link would not work for basic members.

If you know the author and the story title, you can just go to the authors story listing, right click the correct story title, and choose 'copy link location'.

...but that gives you a link direct to the story, and if someone follows it (or the browser preloads it), they've used up one of their daily download allowance and incremented the story download count, even if they decide against reading past the chapter index page.

...but that gives you a link direct to the story, and if someone follows it (or the browser preloads it), they've used up one of their daily download allowance and incremented the story download count, even if they decide against reading past the chapter index page.

Not the chapter index page, the author page where all his stories are listed. That would not count and you can copy the link from the clickable story title.

Only prefetch could possibly thwart that, but I sure hope the browser is not gonna prefetch all of the possibly 10 listed stories on the page. As far as I know no browser does prefetching by default.

edit to clarify:
You don't click that story title to go to the story index, you right click the title and choose 'copy link location' from the popup menu.

You don't click that story title to go to the story index, you right click the title and choose 'copy link location' from the popup menu.

..which gives you a link (that you paste into the forum posting) which, when clicked on, takes the user directly into the story or chapter list, with concomitant consumption of a download. You don't use up a download, but everybody who clicks on the link does. My method gives a one-story search result giving exactly the summary information you get in the story entry in the author's story listings page, so the user can see if the story is complete, premier-only, has any reviews or squick tags and so on, without the user of the pasted link using up a daily download and registering a download on the story, just to find out if the story is read-worthy.

You don't use up a download, but everybody who clicks on the link does.

Ah, a misunderstanding. You are of course right, I was thinking about creating the link without a download count. In that case it would probably be just as easy to post the link to the author page which has the story. Seems easier than what you do. Not as accurate, but just easier.

In that case it would probably be just as easy to post the link to the author page which has the story.

You can give both links. Just identify the links as being the story or the author. Those who prefer it can go to the author's page.

Thanks for the tip. I like the resulting link as being more informative than the story or index page.

I will be honest in that I never considered the limitations of a basic account with regards to the links I posted.