This isn't something new. This has been happening to me for a long time.

Sometimes I will bookmark a GMC topic and when I go to check on that topic the next day I get the following message.
Sorry, the link that brought you to this page seems to be out of date or broken.

Usually I just figure that someone deleted the persons topic, or even my topic. But whenever I go back, the topic is still there but the address (a.k.a URL) has changed.

This error doesn't occur every single time. But it does happen every once in a while and is very annoying. I checked my browser to find out if it was my browser that was causing the problems. It wasn't.
Has this happened to any of you? Why is this happening at all?

Frederick

If you give me some examples of these topics, I'll try to find some reason why their URL might have changed.

Of the hundreds of topics links that I've seen in these forums, never once have I seen the proplem as you've described.

For example this topic's URL is:
http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=449325

the topic reference number simply doesn't change, that's the only thing that could change.

Why don't you provide a before and after?

If you arrived at a topic from... say... the "today's active topic" list, then there's additional URL info appended to the topic link. Usually it's &h= or something like that.

So if you bookmarked that, instead of the bare topic URL, could that cause the problem? Not sure... but I don't think so.

Either way, I suppose it's best to use a URL bookmark that just ends with the unique topic ID number. That won't change as long as that topic exists.

EDIT: Are you bookmarking the topic URL than ends with the topic ID? Or are you bookmarking from a particular post?

That doesn't sound right. I don't think &h= does anything, although &hl= will highlight any specific text (for example &hl=if will highlight all instances of "if" on the page), and then there's &st= which is the first post to show, but even if that's off-set it'll automatically set itself to a correct value. And anything behind # is disregarded if it's incorrect.

So to me, it sounds as if he's imagining things, or the URLs actually do change. But as NPT said, those don't (shouldn't) just change like that.

You're right. Just tested it and there's no change.

But as I edited above, a particular post URL might disappear through merging/deleting/moving, while the topic remains.

EDIT: I just tested that idea on a trashed topic. I bookmarked the post ID then deleted that post. But the link still returned the topic. So I'm out of ideas.

Finally a topic that actually matters.

...I've had a problem like this, but it wasn't with a forum....It remains unsolved.

EDIT:
@NPT: To one his own, I suppose.
EDIT:
@NPT: To one his own, I suppose.

OBV your definition of a topic that matters is very different than mine.

My definiton doesn't include topics that complain about a problem nobody else experiences and isn't explained well enough for others to understand, let alone resolve.

I would also have thought that if you feel ths topic is so important, you would have been able to gereate something more thoughtfull than "Finally a topic that actually matters."

never had any problems like this... I even have some bookmarks from gamemaker.nl and they still work.

Btw, nice sig there NPT

I've never had a problem involving bookmarks in particular, since I don't really use bookmarks for this site. But this link I posted in another topic has stopped working, giving the same error as mentioned above. http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?s=&...t&p=3077688
The link is directly to a post made by Chronic on the subject of posting images in the graphics forum. There didn't seem to be any reason for the topic to be closed or deleted, but since I couldn't relocate it and the link I posted to it stopped working I had always assumed it was deleted until now.

And why exactly are you ruling out that that topic is no longer here?

A search for topic 417150 reveals a topic created on Jan 25, a search for topic 417152 reveals another topic created Jan 25.

A search for topic 417151 returns nothing. Why can't you accept the topic was removed?

I haven't extensively worked with the IPB software, and I don't know the MySQL database structure, but I can say with almost complete certainty that this shouldn't be happening. In fact, I don't believe that it can happen. I assume that IPB is using a table for topics (such as ipb_topics) with a primary key that denotes a unique topic identifier, looking something like the following:


Note that topicId is set to auto increment, which means it will start at one (unless otherwise specified) and increment by one on each new topic creation. The PRIMARY KEY constraint requires each record in the database to be unique. With this combination of rules, the topic ID numbers should never duplicate and never head in the negative direction. Therefore, I don't believe that the problem you are experiencing is possible.

EDIT: Just for the sake of completeness, I'll state the obvious. A lot of the time, the message "Sorry, the link that brought you to this page seems to be out of date or broken" means the topic was deleted, but not necessarily removed from the database. It's still sitting there but your member group permissions don't give you access to it, so IPB comes back with a generic error.

EDIT 2: While I'm at it I should say something about the URL structure since it was mentioned in previous posts. If you click on a link on the board index, the URL of the topic is going to look something like this:

http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=449325&pid=3302658&st=0&#entry3302658

Breaking it down:

• http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php - URL of index.php (of course) that handles the operation of viewing topics
• ?showtopic=449325 - Tells index.php to go find the record for topic ID 449325
• &pid=3302658 - I'm almost certain that this is the actual post unique identifier (correct me if I'm wrong)
• &st=0 - Tells IPB where to start the topic. If you set this number higher than zero, the first post will not be shown.
• #entry3302658 - Tells the browser to scroll down to the element with an ID attribute set to "entry3302658"

As you can see, nothing here can be duplicated to create the problem presented in the first post.

As indeed it was. That topic threatened to reveal a closely guarded, dark secret known only to a few select members. We had no choice.


If you'll provide an example, then we can figure out what's going on. I'm sure there's an explanation.

Huh? Dark secret? Gimme! lol, but I dont understand why the GMC would have secrets...

Anyways, this has never happened to me. I dont think it should be able to happen though, it just doesnt make sense, why would a topic change its adress?

Huh, what are you talking about???, I never said that. If you read what I posted you should notice that I stated that before the creation of this topic I always believed that the topic in the post you quoted was deleted. I don't understand why you think I can't accept that the topic was deleted when I have in fact accepted that as the most probably cause a long time ago. As what any of it has to do with this topic, I just thought I'd post that link as a possible example of the problem mentioned in the first post since the op didn't post one. The problem I experienced did have the same error message and since I didn't see any reason for it to be deleted I considered the possibility that the cause of my problem was actually the same as the one the op mentions. At this point I'm not ruling anything out though for either of these situations. Who knows, it could be some sort of pHp virus, even if the probability is low, I'm not ruling out the possibility.


Lol. Are you talking about the unwritten multi-post/multi-image rules? Why would you want to keep that a secrete?
Or was there something in that topic I didn't read? <.< >.>

There is only one common circumstance where a topic (or post) link that was once valid, can become invalid, yet the topic (or post) is still visible to the general membership.

That would be during a topic merge.

If one were to link to a topic, or post entry within a topic, and then that topic were merged into another topic, then all references to the merged topic would no longer be valid as they would reference the original topic id.

Topic merging is such a rarity around here, and the probability that one had booked marked the post even rarer. Add to that, that even if this is the cause, there isn't a solution anyway.

This topic is yet another testament to the lack of solid critical thinking and problem solving skills, running rampant on the GMC.

We have a topic, created by someone who has experienced a problem, instead of applying any kind of problem solving techniques, he just makes a post. The post is vague and doesn't provide an example of the problem. Soon enough, along come the lemmings. Lemming number one praises the OP, claiming finally a worthwhile topic. Lemming number two follows suit with his proof of concept. Of course it's nothing but a false proof of concept. He shows a link to a deleted topic, and had (correctly) thought that all along the linked topic was deleted. But after seeing this topic, now knows that not to be the case, instead it's some weird URL IPB bug.

Common people, this is a forum oriented around a discipline, dependant on good sound application of problem solving and logic.

Is it any wonder that the USA's history is being re-written with conspiracy theories.




Because you claimed that's what you believed, until you read this topic.



I did read your post. Read your own damn post, instead of telling others to.



pHp virus.

Another conspiracy theory born.

NPT, I was just trying to be helpful. If you don't like it then maybe you should just ignore it...


I'm not sure if you were referring to my example here or just the op's, but just to clarify,....I myself copied the url of a post by Chronic and created a link for it which I then posted in a separate topic (also posted it in this topic). If the topic or post that was linked to was deleted that certainly doesn't mean that the link would be deleted as well. The link itself would still exist, and would likely link to the error message. If you meant that my example must be an example of deletion because I looked for the topic and couldn't find it, well then it is true that I looked for it and it is true I didn't find it but that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't there. I still consider merged topics as a possible cause. What about moved topics though? Dose the url for them not change also?


Since I was the only one who posted any links in here (other than your link to this topic), I have to assume that you are referring to me. I'll tell you that I did not post that example as proof of anything. I posted it as something that might be related to the ops problem. Don't go complaining about someone not posting an example and then turn around and call the person who comes along and tries to help by posting a possible one a lemming.

And I thought I made it clear that I wasn't ruling out any possibility. I never even once said that the problem must be a URL bug, where are you getting this from???


And that's true. Now that I have read this topic, I am now open to the possibility that the topic still exists under a different address, where as before, the only possibility I even considered was deletion. But that doesn't mean I am now completely closed to the possibility that the topic was simply closed or deleted. After reading what KC LC posted, I still think deletion is the most probable cause, even though I'm pretty sure she was being sarcastic in that post.


My point was not to make another theory, but to illustrate the fact that there is no case of which I believe must be the case or any case that I believe must not be the case, since you stated earlier that I thought otherwise.

But really, why do you seem so hostile? Is this a hot issue for you, NPT???

edit:

I never told anyone to read my post... If you had read my last post closely you should have known that....

Whoa, I forgot I posted this!

An example eh? I bookmarked that topic in the announcements & news forum called 'staff changes' by KC LC and a few weeks later went to my bookmarks and it didn't work.

This error doesn't happen frequent enough to really worry too much about. It's probably just some random Invision Board ghost error of some kind.

I already PMed KC LC something.

For some strange reason, this topic's URL is showing up as http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=449325 instead of http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=449325, however most of the other topics I open have normal URLs.

EDIT: Well, for whatever reason, my post keeps getting changed after I hit reply, but it should say:

http:// gmc.yoyogames.com/ index.php? s=2dec34db366275abe8c61de0b3b4b535 &showtopic=449325
(without the spaces)

I checked that topic, but still have no idea. It was never merged with another topic. Nor was it ever deleted and replaced with another topic.

Those are the only two reasons I can think of that might break a bookmark, when the topic is still there.


Off hand, I have no idea why. What was your last page, before arriving at this topic?

The last page was 'http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showforum=3'. It's such a coincidence, since it only happens with this topic...

EDIT: Screenshot:

ev149, that's just your session ID, nothing to worry about.

Thanks, Roach tangibleLime.

It's strange that it only happens in this topic, though...

Yeah, don't give yourself a heart attack


No. It happens in other topics too.

Not for me, this is the only time this has happened to me.

I'm not sure why it happens, but you can occasionally see that all over the forum. I've seen it when viewing member's profiles, looking through forums, and even the board index. Regardless, it doesn't do us any good arguing about where we've seen it. Most the time none of us even notice it.

IPB uses cookies to store various bits and pieces of information while you're browsing the forum. When the forum software is unable to use cookies to communicate with your computer, it will append your session ID to the URL to keep your session data intact.

You can try this yourself if you desire. Simply block all incoming cookies and reload the GMC window. You should now see your 32-character session ID (in the form ?s=id). PHP reads that with the statement $_GET['s']; to load the session data without using a cookie. Remove that part of the URL and hit Go. You should now see that without the session ID, you are no longer logged in.

Hope this clears up some confusion.

-tangibleLime