How to link to us
You are welcome to put links to Universalis in your web site. If you let us know then we will link back to you through our Links page.
You may also want to create links for use with banners, or links for RSS feeds.
And of course you may want to bookmark Universalis for yourself.
Usually you will want a link that takes people to today's Universalis content, whenever "today" happens to be. Thus if you create the link at Christmas, someone using it at Easter will see the Universalis content for Easter. You can also make links to specific dates in Universalis: there are separate instructions for this here.
1. Check that the link doesn't identify a specific date
If your link looks like this:
http://www.universalis.com/20090514/today.htm
then remove the 8-digit number, so that it looks like this:
http://www.universalis.com/today.htm
The first kind of link refers to a specific date - in this case, 14 May 2009 - and that is the only date it will ever display. On the other hand, the second kind, with no 8-digit number in the middle of it, will always show you the correct date when you click on it.
If you're making a bookmark for yourself, that's all you really need to remember.
2. Check that the link is for the right local calendar
The calendar you are currently using is Europe - England. If you want to change this, click here.
Different parts of the world have different local calendars, and you need to choose what calendar your link should point to. If your site has a strong local character (such as a parish site), make the link use that calendar. If your site has worldwide interest, you may prefer to omit the calendar name and stick to the General Calendar.
You can easily recognise whether a link has a calendar name in it. Here is a link without a calendar name:
http://www.universalis.com/today.htm
and here is the same address set to use a local calendar:
http://www.universalis.com/Europe.England.Southwark/today.htm
3. Time zones
The day and time you are currently using are Sat 12:40 am. If you want to change this, click here.
Time zones are important because it isn't the same date all over the world. When it's Thursday evening in the USA it's Friday in India.
The Universalis web pages use some JavaScript programming to work out the date. So if you're creating a link to one of the Universalis pages, make sure the link doesn't contain a time zone reference. The page will sort things out for itself when a visitor opens it.
If you're creating a link to a banner or an RSS feed, the programming won't work. Instead, you need to think about the time zone. If you have a target audience, use their time zone.
You can easily recognise whether a link has a time zone. Here is a link without a time zone:
http://www.universalis.com/today.htm
and here is the same address set to use a time zone 10 hours ahead of GMT:
http://www.universalis.com/1000/today.htm
or 4 hours behind GMT:
http://www.universalis.com/-0400/today.htm
Links for banners
The HTML code for a banner contains two Universalis addresses: the address of the image that is displayed as a banner, and the address of the page that the banner will send you to when you click on it. You'll have to apply the same calendar and time zone techniques for both those addresses. You can read more about banners on our Banners page.
