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Encyclopedia > Permalink
Example of a permalink at Jason Kottke's blog. In this instance, the # symbol indicates a permanent link to the blog entry in question
Example of a permalink at Jason Kottke's blog. In this instance, the # symbol indicates a permanent link to the blog entry in question

A permalink is a URL that points to a specific blogging entry even after the entry has passed from the front page into the blog archives. Because a permalink remains unchanged indefinitely, its use avoids link rot. Most modern weblogging and content-syndication software systems, including Wordpress, Movable Type, LiveJournal, RapidWeaver, Pivot and Blogger, support such links. Other types of websites use permalinks, too, but the term itself is most common within the blogosphere. Permalink is a portmanteau word made from permanent link. Permalinks are often simply stated so as to be human-readable. Image File history File links Permalink_example. ... Image File history File links Permalink_example. ... // Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is a technical, Web-related term used in two distinct meanings: In popular usage, it is a widespread synonym for Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) — many popular and technical texts will use the term URL when referring to URI; Strictly, the idea of a uniform syntax for... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Link rot is the process by which links on a website gradually become irrelevant or broken as time goes on, because websites that they link to disappear, change their content or redirect to new locations. ... WordPress is a blog publishing system written in PHP and backed by a MySQL database. ... A case of cast metal type pieces and typeset matter in a composing stick Movable type is the system of printing and typography using movable pieces of metal type, made by casting from matrices struck by letterpunches. ... LiveJournal (often abbreviated LJ) is a virtual community where Internet users can keep a blog, journal, or diary. ... RapidWeaver is a WYSIWYG template-based website creation tool exclusive to Mac OS X. Previous WYSIWYG web editors—especially FrontPage—had a reputation of generating low quality markup, whereas RapidWeaver boasts full compliance to W3C standards. ... Blogger is a weblog publishing system owned by Google since 2003. ... Blogosphere is a collective term encompassing all blogs and their interconnections. ... Portmanteau has two meanings. ... Human-readable refers to a representation of information that can be naturally read by humans. ...

Contents

History

One cited early use of permalink in its current sense was by Jason Kottke on March 5, 2000, in a post titled: "Finally. Did you notice the" (permalinked at http://www.kottke.org/00/03/finally-did-you-notice-the.) Matt Haughey had discussed a permalink style feature with Blogger co-founders, Evan Williams and Paul Bausch the previous weekend and Paul Bausch had pointed out that it was technically feasible to produce permanent links in Blogger, using a feature written by him that allowed the ID of a post to be placed in a Blogger template. In response to Kottke's blog, on March 6, 2000, Matt Haughey posted the technical details on his own weblog, which helped open the way to widespread adoption. Jason Kottke (born September 27, 1973) is a well known American blogger and former web designer currently living in New York City. ... This article is about the day. ... 2000 (MM) was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Matt Haughey Matthew Haughey is the founder of the community weblog MetaFilter, where he is known as mathowie. ... Blogger is a weblog publishing system owned by Google since 2003. ... Evan Williams is the name of several people. ... Blogger is a blog publishing system. ... is the 65th day of the year (66th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2000 (MM) was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...


Purpose

Permanence in links is desirable when content items are likely to be linked to, from, or cited by, a source outside the originating organization. Before the advent of large-scale dynamic websites built on database-backed content management systems, it was more common for URLs of specific pieces of content to be static and human readable, as URL structure and naming were dictated by the entity creating that content. Increased volume of content and difficulty of management led to the rise of database-driven systems, and the resulting unwieldy and often-changing URLs necessitated deliberate policies with regard to URL design and link permanence. For example, Wikipedia's internal cgi-based URLs [1] are re-written to a more human-readable form [2]. A citation or bibliographic citation is a reference to a book, article, web page, or other published item with sufficient detail to identify the item uniquely. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... A Content Management System (CMS) is a software system used for content management. ...


An entry in a blog with many entries is accessible from the site's front page for only a short time. Visitors who store the URL for a particular entry often find upon their return that the desired content has been replaced by something new. Prominently posting permalinks is a method employed by bloggers to encourage visitors to store a more long-lived URL (the permalink) for reference.


Permalinks frequently consist of a string of characters which represent the date and time of posting, and an identifier which denotes the author who initially authored the item or its subject. Crucially, if an item is changed, renamed, or moved within the internal database, its permalink remains unaltered, as it functions as a magic cookie which references an internal database identifier. If an item is deleted altogether, its permalink can frequently not be reused. In computer programming, a magic cookie or cookie is a token or short packet of data passed between communicating programs, where the data is typically not meaningful to the recipient program. ...


Permalinks have subsequently been exploited for a number of innovations, including link tracing and link trackback in weblogs, and referring to specific weblog entries in RSS or Atom syndication streams. A Trackback is one of three types of Linkbacks, methods for Web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. ... For RSS feeds from Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Syndication. ... The name Atom applies to a pair of related standards. ...


Permalinks and versions

On Wikipedia, a permanent link to a specific version of an article is obtained from the "Permanent link" entry in the toolbox.
On Wikipedia, a permanent link to a specific version of an article is obtained from the "Permanent link" entry in the toolbox.

Many blogging and content management systems do not support versioning of content, that is, if an entry is updated, a uniquely accessible version is not created. Thus, in the context of these systems, a permalink may refer to different content over time. In the context of systems that support versioning, such as most wikis, a permalink is commonly understood as a link to a specific version. Here, both the link itself and the resource it refers to should not change over time. Image File history File links Wikipedia_permalink_example. ... Image File history File links Wikipedia_permalink_example. ... Revision control (also known as version control, source control or (source) code management (SCM)) is the management of multiple revisions of the same unit of information. ... Look up Wiki in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...


One wiki implementation which supports this type of permalinks is MediaWiki, the software which runs Wikipedia. In its current implementation, old revisions of specific articles, images, and templates are referenceable by unique unchanging URLs, although old versions of images and templates may not be utilized by current entries. Permanent links to specific versions are recommended for citing articles from sources such as Wikipedia and Wikinews, to ensure that the content remains unchanged for review. A reviewer can then view the cited revision, the current revision, and the differences between the two. MediaWiki is a web-based wiki software application used by all projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, all wikis hosted by Wikia, and many other wikis, including some of the largest and most popular ones. ... Wikipedia (IPA: , or ( ) is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization. ... Wikinews is a free-content news source and a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. ...


Popular permalink formats

Blogging software creators and blog hosting websites have not agreed on a standard format for permalink URLs. Some within the blogging community feel that standardization would lead to the practice of meta-information about articles being mined from the URLs themselves rather than an associated RSS stream or meta tags stored within the content. Although various permalink implementations accomplish essentially the same job, several vendors have produced different solutions.

Movable Type and TypePad
http://<username>.typepad.com/<username>/<4 digit year>/<2 digit month>/<15 character name>.html
Blogspot
http://<username>.blogspot.com/<4 digit year>/<2 digit month>/<article name>.html
boastMachine
http://<site-specific prefix>/post/<blog_name>/<unique integer identifier>/<article name>
WordPress
http://<site-specific prefix>/<4 digit year>/<2 digit month>/<2 digit day>/<article name>/
WordPress.com
http://<selectedsubdomainname>.wordpress.com/<4 digit year>/<2 digit month>/<2 digit day>/<article name>/
LiveJournal and Bloglines
http://<username>.livejournal.com/<unique integer identifier>.html
http://users.livejournal.com/<username>/<unique integer identifier>.html for usernames beginning or ending with an underscore
http://community.livejournal.com/<community name>/<unique integer identifier>.html for communities
Midgard CMS
http://<site-specific prefix>/midcom-permalink-<document unique identifier>
Typo
http://<site-specific prefix>/articles/<4 digit year>/<2 digit month>/<2 digit day>/<article name>
Community Server
http://<site-specific prefix>/archive/<4 digit year>/<2 digit month>/<2 digit day>/<article name>.aspx
Radio Userland
http://radio.weblogs.com/<7 digit Radio Id>/<4 digit year>/<2 digit month>/<2 digit day>.html#a<post number>
http://radio.weblogs.com/<7 digit Radio Id>/categories/<category>/<4 digit year>/<2 digit month>/<2 digit day>.html#a<post number> for posts in a category
http://<site-specific prefix>/<4 digit year>/<2 digit month>/<2 digit day>.html#a<post number>
http://<site-specific prefix>/categories/<category>/<4 digit year>/<2 digit month>/<2 digit day>.html#a<post number> for posts in a category
dasBlog
http://<site-specific prefix>/<article name>.aspx

A case of cast metal type pieces and typeset matter in a composing stick Movable type is the system of printing and typography using movable pieces of metal type, made by casting from matrices struck by letterpunches. ... TypePad is a blogging service from company Six Apart Ltd, generally considered the largest paid blogging service in the world. ... Blogger logo Blogger, a coined word created by Pyra Labs, is a service that provides Web-based tools used by individuals to publish to the Web. ... WordPress is a blog publishing system written in PHP and backed by a MySQL database. ... WordPress. ... LiveJournal (often abbreviated LJ) is a virtual community where Internet users can keep a blog, journal, or diary. ... Bloglines is a web-based news aggregator for browsing weblogs and other news feeds. ... The Midgard Project Midgard CMS is an Open Source Content management system built on the Midgard Framework. ... Typo is a free, open source content management system written in the Ruby on Rails web application framework. ... Community Server is a community collaboration platform that consists of a core blog, forums, photo gallery, and file sharing system. ... A client-side blogging software package from UserLand Software, including an RSS aggregator, outliner and scripting language. ...

Presentation of permalinks

Blog entries are usually laid out as follows:

  • Title
  • Date
  • Entry
  • Comments, permalink, and what category the entry was posted to (known as metadata)

Permalinks are usually denoted by text link (i.e. "Permalink" or "Link to this Entry"), but sometimes a symbol may be used. The most common symbol used is the hash sign, or #. However, certain websites employ their own symbol to represent a permalink such as an asterisk, a dash, a pilcrow (ΒΆ), or a unique icon. Metadata is data about data. ... An asterisk (*), is a typographical symbol or glyph. ... A pilcrow from the font Gentium, designed by J. Victor Gaultney, 2002. ...


Permalink detection

Permalinks can be indicated within the HTML of a page so as to allow automated browsing tools to detect the permalink and use it for linking instead of the stated URL. The link element should include the following attributes: HTML, short for Hypertext Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for the creation of web pages. ... // Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is a technical, Web-related term used in two distinct meanings: In popular usage, it is a widespread synonym for Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) — many popular and technical texts will use the term URL when referring to URI; Strictly, the idea of a uniform syntax for...


<link rel="bookmark" href="[Permalink URL]" />


See also

Deep linking, on the World Wide Web, is the act of placing on a Web page a hyperlink that points to a specific page or image within another website, as opposed to that websites main or home page. ... A digital object identifier (or DOI) is a standard for persistently identifying a piece of intellectual property on a digital network and associating it with related data, the metadata, in a structured extensible way. ... Link rot is the process by which links on a website gradually become irrelevant or broken as time goes on, because websites that they link to disappear, change their content or redirect to new locations. ... On the Internet, a persistent uniform resource locator (PURL) is a uniform resource locator (URL) (i. ... Purple Numbers refers to a suite of tools that allow addressing HTML content at the paragraph level. ... A webpage or web page is a page of the World Wide Web, usually in HTML/XHTML format (the file extensions are typically htm or html) and with hypertext links to enable navigation from one page or section to another. ...

External links

Look up permalink in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

  Results from FactBites:
 
WordPress Tip on Permalink Options (5331 words)
The reasons I discourage date’s in a permalink are: It is redundant information as date is already part of the post information and need not be additionally within the url.
My advice to new wordpress users when choosing a permalink structure would be to stick with “ugly” links for awhile until they can really get a feel for how they’d like to use their blog.
Permalink structure is defaulted to /%year%/%month%/%postname%/ for clarity.
Using Permalinks « WordPress Codex (2829 words)
Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your individual weblog posts, as well as categories and other lists of weblog postings.
A permalink is what another weblogger will use to refer to your article (or section), or how you might send a link to your story in an e-mail message.
To fix it, either switch your Permalink structure to "Date and name based" or hack the UTW plugin to place the UTW rewrites at the top of the internal rewrites array.
  More results at FactBites »

 

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