Why is "Web Page" not an option from the "New Item" drop down?

Markzz

Zotero for Windows, 5.0.95.1

If you add a new item, the drop down list does not include "Web Page". And yes, I positioned the Zotero app so that I could scroll to the very bottom. The option isn't there. So the only way to make a web page entry is to either duplicate an existing web page entry, or make some other type of entry and then change the type (Web page is selected as an option if you attempt to change an existing type).

Thanks!

dstillman

This is by design — you don't want to add webpages this way. See Manually Adding Items.

Markzz

@dstillman But at least in my current case, the Zotero clipper refused to make the web page item. That's why I needed to make it manually. I'm guessing it's a kind of page that didn't have a "translator" ? So if the clipper can't always make an item, it seems that at least Zotero could make it easy to do manually.

DWL-SDCA

What webpage URL? What browser?

This should just work. Right click on the webpage, from the drop-down menu select Zotero connector, then save to Zotero with or without snapshot.

I just tested this. On a Windows 10 machine it works with Chrome, Edge, and Firefox.

dstillman

@Markzz: If it can't save, there's something completely broken about your installation and you should let us help you fix that, not give up on the core premise of Zotero. Even when there's no translator, the connector should always fall back to a generic webpage item.

If this is happening on a specific page, we'd want to see an example URL. If it's happening across many sites, see Troubleshooting Problems Saving to Zotero.

fletchapin

I just wanted to chime in that I have to manually add websites frequently (when I say frequently, I have manually created hundreds if not more than a thousand webpage entries), so I'd appreciate if this was available in the dropdown. It's not the biggest deal, but having to click a few extra times to change the manually created item to a web page is a pain when I'm doing it so frequently.

For context, I am collecting utility data, so when the tariffs are updated annually the old webpages are intentionally taken offline (and hence Zotero connector will not work).

In these cases, I believe citation best practices indicate that I should put the broken URL and the date that I accessed the URL (when it was working). At the moment I believe has to be done manually, and I would appreciate support for this use case.

I just want to add in case there are concerns about having a record of broken URLs: I have manually archived the data, and it is available on the Wayback Machine, but I still believe best practice is to cite the broken URL and not the Wayback Machine (as the broken URL was the true source of the information).