Usage of sur.ly for outbound links.

[Moonchild]

As a measure to deal with links that are posted but not described properly, we've put an extension to the forum in place that feeds these external links through sur.ly -- this adds a level of checking for you as a user by adding a toolbar to the visited external site indicating the public reputation of the site visited as well as easy links to go back to the forum. This is a convenience service for your benefit.

Because the links get rewritten and may not be what you expect, observant people might have noticed the changed links and find them suspicious - but please understand that the urls being changed to sur.ly urls is very much on purpose
A number of domains linked to (trusted domains) won't get rewritten, and posts by explicitly trusted user groups (like moderators) also won't be rewritten.

We are currently running this as a trial; it seems to be a good service and useful addition to protect our users. It's unfortunately not possible to disable this on a per-user basis if you, as a user, don't like it, but Tobin has written a small script to rewrite URLs back to their bare form.
https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/22256-unsurly

[lyceus]

Actually *every* link I press from here tell me that is dangerous website like Ask Woody, Slashdot or Microsoft. I though I was hacked and got a toolbar or else. Thank you for tell us that, I will prefer copy and pasta the links from now.

Oh how to do that? Just select the link and copy the text do not copy the URL or you will get the sur.ly one. Look MA! No scripts!

[New Tobin Paradigm]

That only works when someone doesn't do This...

NOTE: Because my group is exempt from rewriting.. it will be a naked url.. But point made..

My little user script works 100%.

[LimboSlam]

Oh good. I thought I caught some nasty adware and was just about to do some malware scans, as well as report it to you guys here.

Thanks for the clarification.

[coffeebreak]

Would you please update the Unsurly script to work with your recent modifications to the plugin? Right now the script is broken.

[Moonchild]

Yeah the outbound links are now going through our own subdomain.
Sorry, this is still a work-in-progress. Might see a few more changes in how links are going to work.

[coffeebreak]

Thanks for the quick reply and warning about more changes. I hope the script will be updated to keep pace with those changes.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

I will take a gander at the changes once I get home and adjust as needed.

[coffeebreak]

Thanks, Tobin. Sorry for delay in replying. I look forward to using the script when it functions.


Meanwhile, here is something I noticed that *seems* unintended: URLs to specific Google Group forums are lopped off at the end. As a consequence, clicking through takes you to the Google Groups main overview page rather than the specified forum.

Example is found in this post: http://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=12816#p90640.

Original link posted was:

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https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/reminderfox

If I hover/view it in statusbar (or copy link location) I get the following:

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http://outbound.palemoon.org/s/groups.google.com/forum/

Image that illustrates this:

[Moonchild]

Sur.ly has been disabled for now since there are a few incompatibilities with outbound links and the way they are rewritten, as well and non-functional analytics on them.

I've re-enabled the extension now. If you have specific target domains that don't work, please let me know and I can add those to the exception rules.

[Moonchild]

The people at sur.ly are working on improving their extension and getting working analytics in. Please bear with them/us.

[half-moon]

Just to let you guys know surly redirect links show even with Unsurly userscript being enabled.

[coffeebreak]

About the Unsurly userscript (https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/22256-unsurly):

Thanks for updating the Unsurly userscript last week. The Sur.ly plugin was turned off when the userscript was updated, so it wasn't possible to check it out at that time. However, Sur.ly got turned back on as of a couple days ago and...

The updated script does not work. Would you please update it again?

EDIT:
Just a mention... Half-moon's post wasn't up there when I made this post, I believe it got relocated to this thread after I posted. ( I wouldn't have just ignored it. :))

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Updated to 1.0a4.. Go get it..

NOTE: since version 1.0a2.. I am unable to determine proper target scheme of the link so it has been rewritten to http:// regardless.. This may have issues on links that don't properly handle http only or don't provide a redirect to https.

If you encounter such a url please send me a PM with the subject "Unsurly" and paste the sur.ly enabled link.

Example:

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https://outbound.palemoon.org/[rest of the url]

Thanks.

[coffeebreak]

Tobin, thank you for the updated script!

There is one glitch with it though...
It only looks for links that start with 'https'.
Links that were posted originally as 'http' are simply ignored, because the search string will never match them.

(Here's a thread btw that has multiple links of both types on one page, for checking purposes: http://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=12483).

Would it not be possible to have two searches (like in v.1.0a1) where 'https...' has an *s target, and 'http...' has a *p target?

Or else (now that the wandering 's/' has been reattached to its 'http')...
Just search for 'outbound.palemoon.org/' and replace it with nothing, i.e. with '' ?

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Guess i'll have to look at it again see exactly what is up.. Yeah, i'll add a second check..

[Moonchild]

Tobin: the people at sur.ly have fixed http/https now. They have a certificate now for outbound.palemoon.org so they can preserve http or https.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

I will update the script soon..

[New Tobin Paradigm]

The script has been updated to version 1.0b1. Get it here: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/22256-unsurly/code

Hopefully, this should work as well as the "sur.ly/o/[encodedurl]/ID/" did. Which means HTTP(S) should be properly preserved.

There is one small limitation left.. This won't preserve the www. part in links. This is a bit of a sticky thing.. Some sites enforce with server redirects to www. and others will redirect attempts to a url with the www. subdomain to the base domain.

For example palemoon.org the main domain has it set in the server config to redirect:

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http://palemoon.org to http://www.palemoon.org

However, binaryoutcast.com the main domain has it set to redirect all calls to no www. subdomain:

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http://www.binaryoutcast.com to http://binaryoutcast.com

Most sites will either respond in a similar manor one way or the other but many simply serve regardless of www. or not. However, there IS a small chance that some server administrator half-assed their server config and will ONLY serve with www. or without www. These sites are merely configured badly and should serve from one or the other or both.

If you run into one of those improperly configured servers please end me a PM on the forum with the subject Unsurly with the original sur.ly or outbound.palemoon.org link and I will write in a check to make sure intolerant sites get their www. part.

[coffeebreak]

Thank you for the update. It works perfectly! XD