Upgrade StorageFeature Request
I apologize if this is the wrong forum, but I'd like to put in a feature request for the Mac version of the Zotero App.
The feature is the ability to edit the "retrieved from" link that is a subset of the main resource. Many of the books I reference are on Amazon.com. Unfortunately the same title can have multiple entries, most of whom are from sellers trying to game the system and sell their products as "rare" books with a corresponding price tag.
As such I like to reference the search url that brought the list of titles up, or the author's page in the worse case. This way anyone who clicks on that link will see all the possible versions of the same book.
The added benefit is that this helps in SEO, apparently dead links are a no-no these days. So if I make the mistake of linking to a book that is removed at a later point, my site gets penalized for it. Linking to the list of the same title will help reduce that issue drastically.
Right now I am deleting this sublink, editing the URL in the main entry. But when I use Katie's awesome Wordpress plugin to display the reference, I have to use some custom short links to display the reference URL instead of the default short links the plugin will build for you.
In addition to the above benefits this would save me several steps as I tend to use the same core references in many of my posts
The feature is the ability to edit the "retrieved from" link that is a subset of the main resource. Many of the books I reference are on Amazon.com. Unfortunately the same title can have multiple entries, most of whom are from sellers trying to game the system and sell their products as "rare" books with a corresponding price tag.
As such I like to reference the search url that brought the list of titles up, or the author's page in the worse case. This way anyone who clicks on that link will see all the possible versions of the same book.
The added benefit is that this helps in SEO, apparently dead links are a no-no these days. So if I make the mistake of linking to a book that is removed at a later point, my site gets penalized for it. Linking to the list of the same title will help reduce that issue drastically.
Right now I am deleting this sublink, editing the URL in the main entry. But when I use Katie's awesome Wordpress plugin to display the reference, I have to use some custom short links to display the reference URL instead of the default short links the plugin will build for you.
In addition to the above benefits this would save me several steps as I tend to use the same core references in many of my posts
(And you don't want to use the item's URL field for this. That's for the canonical source for the item, used for citation purposes.)
At some point in the future some of those books will be removed from the store. It is easiest for me to use the search link (pasted above) to reduce that possibility. Otherwise I'll need to go back to Amazon, find the book again, re-add the reference into Zotero, reimport it, then edit every post that has the invalid reference with the new one. Before I started using the search results link I spent several hours a month just fixing direct links on resources.
Unfortunately the Attach Link option does not seem to work at all. No matter what I type in both/either fields, including a shortened url just to test, I can not click the "OK" button. Its blue, ready to click, but clicking it does nothing. I have removed the book from the standalone software, and re-added via the Zotero browser plugin button. I have tried to remove the Attachment and add a new one, with the same non-functioning results. I have also tried it on several other resources all with the same result, even after updating the standalone software.
The other two "attach" buttons both work fine. I'm on version 4.0.25.3
Your last statement brings up a question. If that URL field is supposed to be the canonical source, then why is it always blank? Why does the software create an attachment with the link in it instead?
As for the last question, because a book seller (or a library catalog) is not a canonical source for a book. It shouldn't be included in citations, at least not in the academic context for which Zotero is designed.
An example where you'd get a URL is when importing from NYTimes.com, since you can actually find the article (rather than an option to buy/borrow it) at the URL. Same for online journal articles.
In any case, Rick, "Attach Link to URI…" is fixed in 4.0.26, available now.