Cycling UK Forum

I have never had any success with any of the URL addresses in Cycling Plus magazine. I spent an hour or so trying to get into "tinyurl.com/cplus-giant365" without success. Trying to contact the magazine is difficult unless you want to subscribe or spend money.

Is this a common thread or have any in the forum had a success and downloaded any of the rides which appear in their articles.

Regards,
Rod Bridgett.

The tinyurl address that you supplied works ok for me. How are you entering the address into the browser, and what happens as a result?

It works for me, too. I copied the address (between the quote marks, not including the quote marks) into the address bar of my browser. Alternatively, click this:

http://tinyurl.com/cplus-giant365

Strange, the URL in the reply from snibgo went to the ride in question but with a different title, cycling plus263, and without the download available. Using Google or the Yahoo browser doesn't recover any results at all. I will try another browser. Thank you for your time, I won't pursue this anu further.

Regards,
Rod Bridgett.

Web pages are transmitted between the web server and your browser using the HTTP protocol. It may be that your browser doesn't make the assumption to use the http protocol when you enter the address as you posted it. As an example web browsers also support FTP, WML and various other network transfer protocols.

tinyurl.com/cplus-giant365

If you always prefix the pages with http:// you are telling the browser to go retrieve the web page and use the http protocol to communicate with the cycling plus web server. Internet Explorer and Firefox assume you want to use http if you don't say otherwise. Google Chrome and your Yahoo browser may not by default.

Hence why http://tinyurl.com/cplus-giant365 works!

R Bridgett wrote:Strange, the URL in the reply from snibgo went to the ride in question but with a different title, cycling plus263, and without the download available. Using Google or the Yahoo browser doesn't recover any results at all. I will try another browser. Thank you for your time, I won't pursue this anu further.

Regards,
Rod Bridgett.

Search engines such as Google and Yahoo aren't the best way to go about getting to the web pages you want. The reason for this is because tinyurl is merely a middleman service that shortens any given url into a more manageable (and possibly memorable) address.

As tinyurl addresses are merely a conduit to the web page, they will not appear in search engines unless someone posts the url on a website. For example, a google search on 'tinyurl.com/cplus-giant365' now provides three results - one referencing this topic, another to the bikeradar forum with a similar question (I'm assuming from you as it's a practically the same username!) and a third from the main bikeradar site.

In short, you will rarely if ever find the tinyurl addresses that you are searching for on, for example, Google. Furthermore you do not need to use a search engine - you only need to type the address into the address bar (the bar at the top of the web browser - currently showing the address 'http://forum.ctc.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=64323') and the tinyurl service will take you straight to the page.

I'd expect the CTC to just have a "magazine links" page - sorted by year/month/page

http://ctc.org.uk/cycle/2011

takes you a page with the most recent cover at the top, followed by a table of page numbers/links

If you're using link shorteners the only one worth the bother is the magnificent http://upthear.se

djoptix wrote:If you're using link shorteners the only one worth the bother is the magnificent http://upthear.se

Thank you for that, sir

LOL