Mac Bytes column

[Erendiox]

Just a random thought about the Mac Bytes column on the MR frontpage. Why is it that the individual links in the other columns (such as Daily Tunes and iPod Gear) bring you directly to that particular place/tune/item etc, while every individual Mac Bytes story link just brings you to the Mac Bytes homepage and not to the story?

Just wanted to point that out. It seemed rather inconsistent to me.

 

[ebow]

Just a random thought about the Mac Bytes column on the MR frontpage. Why is it that the individual links in the other columns (such as Daily Tunes and iPod Gear) bring you directly to that particular place/tune/item etc, while every individual Mac Bytes story link just brings you to the Mac Bytes homepage and not to the story?

Just wanted to point that out. It seemed rather inconsistent to me.

Excellent question--it's been bugging me for a while. If anyone who can change things is reading, here's another vote for this improvement.

 

[Daveway]

Yes, it's something that should be changed. Its been like this for a longgg time.

MacBytes does have an RSS feed: www.macbytes.com/macbytes.xml

 

[jaw04005]

I agree. It drives me nuts everytime I click on a link. Arn is that something that can be updated?

 

[Veldek]

I agree. It's been bugging me, too. But I think arn wants to get the reader directly to his site (MacBytes) instead of the linked sites. So, perhaps these links could lead to the forum thread instead?

 

[ebow]

I agree. It's been bugging me, too. But I think arn wants to get the reader directly to his site (MacBytes) instead of the linked sites.

Ah, good point. I wonder if the MacBytes site could be re-tooled so that when you click on a headline from MacRumors, that row is highlighed on the MacBytes page. Kinda-sorta similar to how your search terms are highlighted when you view Google's cached copy of a page.

 

[michaelrjohnson]

I had thought that they wanted to send the MacBytes traffic to MacBytes.com, rather than let us bypass the homepage. (that it was intentional)

However, if it's not intentional, then a direct link to the article would be great, but maybe a direct link to the forum thread would be better (as the first post in that thread would be a link to the article).

 

[Doctor Q]

As you surmise, the goal is to take people to MacBytes (as opposed to skipping MacBytes to follow the original link or taking people to the MacRumors forums), but MacBytes does not have "landing place" for each story, so there is no specific page to take you to. Given the tradeoffs, arn chose the current method, which puts you on the main page where the story should be easy to spot at or near the top of the page.

 

[ebow]

Okay, the policy of linking to the MacBytes main page makes sense. What's confusing me now are ghost stories--ones that appear in the MacRumors "portlet" to MacBytes but not on the MacBytes site itself. For example, right now there's a link to "Mac 101: Your guide to using a Mac effectively and efficiently." yet there's no such story when you click through. This has happened at least once before, maybe several times. Gremlins in the feed that MacBytes sends to MacRumors?

(You'd think I'd have better things to worry about, like all the work I'm supposed to be doing here... at work. )

 

[Doctor Q]

Okay, the policy of linking to the MacBytes main page makes sense. What's confusing me now are ghost stories--ones that appear in the MacRumors "portlet" to MacBytes but not on the MacBytes site itself. For example, right now there's a link to "Mac 101: Your guide to using a Mac effectively and efficiently." yet there's no such story when you click through. This has happened at least once before, maybe several times. Gremlins in the feed that MacBytes sends to MacRumors?

You are correct about the link. I can't explain it!

 

[FredAkbar]

That Mac 101 link used to be there. It must've gotten removed from MacBytes for some reason, but didn't accordingly get removed from the column on MacRumors.