Cookies could be the answer.

[Paulson]

Subscriber.anandtech and forums.anandtech really suck when mixed together, due to the fact that one can't view the other, or the other would be on something that they're paying for and shouldn't be viewing anyways.

Suggestion?

How about when we visit the forum, AnandTech checks our cookie, and determines whether or not we're a subscriber or just a regular non paying member.

If you were just a member and decided to pay, you would go to anandtech.com/subscriptions.htm and then login and it would delete your cookie, and replace it with the subscriber cookie...

What these would do is automatically change the URL's. So say your a non subscriber. Someone links to subscriber.anandtech.com, and you click on it, the site checks your cookie, sees you aren't a subscriber, and automatically brings you to forums.anandtech.com server.

If you are a subscriber and someone links to forums.anandtech.com, well then the cookie would tell the browser to go to subscriber.anandtech.com instead.

Maybe this isn't possible, but at least it'd be a good idea.

 

[HansXP]

I think a better idea is just to make all the links relative...

 

[narzy]

this could be an answer too...I know its a self fix but it does work quite well...

here is a quick fix posted by sir fredrick


For those having a forums.anandtech.com vs. subscriber.anandtech.com link issue, here's a nice little workaround.
Find your "hosts" file. In win2k, it's located in x:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\
the name of the file is "hosts" with no extention. Open that up in notepad.
If you are a subscriber, add a new line to the bottom that says:
216.151.100.119 forums.anandtech.com

Now you can even visit the subscription server by going to forums.anandtech.com! And so then if you link to other threads via the copy and paste, everyone will be able to follow your links.

If you are not a subscriber, and have no plans to become one, add a line that looks like this:

216.151.100.125 subscriber.anandtech.com

Then if someone who is a subscriber carelessly posts a link that points to the subscriber forum, you'll still be able to access it without changing the URL.



PS: why cookies might be not so hot, thats some serious extra server load to pull that off, the server would have to check the cookie for every page you visit on the forums, then redirect you to the appropriate place...there has got to be a better way , perhaps a filter on each server that looks for the other's link and changes it accordingly, ex someone on the subscriber server goes to a thread with a link to the forums server in it, the subscriber server automaticly changes the forums.anandtech.com...to subscriber.anandtech.com...this would also be a considerable amount of load...herm...