URLs in shop descriptions not working

Hey guys, take a look. I had a customer point this out to me today. See animated GIF below.


It's been years since I've done any edits on those URLs and they have worked flawlessly, so it's definitely something that has been changed internally. Please fix this. Thanks.

All the best,
James

What url do you have in those links?

A good while back, the base url changed from
https://www.shapeways.com/model/MODEL#
to
https://www.shapeways.com/product/SPIN#

You have to update to use the new URL.

Thanks Stony, but I'm too lazy to do any updating! HAHA!

If it's something that's not going to be repaired by Shapeways I'll just wait until they finish work on the variations.

For your interest the URLs look like this example:
https://www.shapeways.com/product/ZWS8CX3BP/ouroboros-ring-u s-size-9?li=shortUrl They only work for me when I am logged in.

I think it has something to do with the URL shortener, because I always used the Shortened URL whenever I made links to other shop pages. Here's how a URL looks that works: https://www.shapeways.com/product/ZWS8CX3BP/ouroboros-ring-u s-size-9?key=e68552f36c4c570e9fba4661d21b676e&optionId=5 9030147 This is for 14k plated rose gold. This works logged in or not.

I think you are getting bit by the short URL bugs. Ouch!

Specifically the short URLs having been (mostly) disabled as it was too easy to enter a random sequence of four characters to see a "surprise" model that may be private.

I have generally been using the address with the SPIN number but not anything after that including the title or option ID, mostly since those two things can change over time. Perhaps this is a good time for Shapeways to chime in and tell us what is best to use and what will remain backwards compatible in the future.

*cough* Perhaps it's a good time for Shapeways to support its legacy link formats. I too have no plan to run around updating all my model descriptions every time SW reshuffles its directory structure.

This makes me feel like Shapeways wants me to spend my time doing site maintenance, instead of making art.

So I'm not the only one with the short URL problem. On Mandelwerk's page, there's also a broken URL. (Search for "GLOBAL HAZARD", like this.) http://shpws.me/M6iS
 ? Why is there "& # 13 ;" in there?

I just received a customer complaint! Gosh! I can't even be lazy! HAHA!

Guess I'll have to fix those. UGGGGG! Damn! That's LOT of work! *cries* *snivels*

I'm going to sculpt and print voodoo dolls of all of Shapeways' code writers and then I'm going to do weird things to them! HAHAHA! So, if you happen to see a voodoo doll of yourself moving down the production line YOU'LL KNOW WHY!

Hey! That's pretty darn cool! I can't wait till that is fully launched! That's going to be great! That's probably the number two reason I don't add new ring designs to Shapeways because it's so much work making all of the ring size URLs. The number one reason is adding all the material variations and markups for all of the sizes. Gosh! That's like having a full time job doing all that! HAHA!

I guess shapeways just has to go on throwing out at least one major component of their site each year (and replacing it with something incompatible) in order to still call themselves a startup after, what, eight years ?

It doesn't look too bad. Can't wait to try it out!

@UniverseBecoming: Thanks for updating the links and sorry for the trouble. I'm excited of the upcoming variants. With it we can put these kind of headaches behind us and serve people looking at your products so much better.

Just to provide some context, the URL structure for products has changed once... about 1.5 years ago (can't remember exactly) when we went from "one model is a product" thinking to "product can have one or more models" thinking. This is when the SPIN was introduced and urls started to point to /product instead of /model. We understood the implications of this change and so the team was very diligent creating a logic that lasts. And it has served us very well. We've been adding features to products during this year (e.g. you can now have different models for different materials within the same product) and the biggest improvements are still to come. Yet, there hasn't been a thought that we would need to change our URL structure. So in the foreseeable future there isn't another reshuffling in sight.

Wild guess: dropping URLs that worked for >~6 years, instead of keeping them forever via the proper redirect. That is a huge link rot that trashes lot of advertisment work (and keeps signaling that any future work can be trashed too). Supporting https://www.shapeways.com/model/MODELNUM for any MODELNUM lower than "number-reached-some-days-ago" means no extra work as it was implemented already. But hey, more lost sales, par for the course.