Universalis

How to link to a date

Most of the time you will want to link to a Universalis page in general (instructions are here) so that when your readers click on the link, they get the content for the current date. But sometimes you want the opposite. For instance, you may be running a blog and you may want to comment on the Office of a particular day.

For instance, here is a link to the Office of Readings for the feast of Corpus Christi 2011.

The first thing you will notice about the above link is that it doesn't work.

Any link you make will work for a limited period only: from about a month in advance of the date to a month after the date. Whatever use you make of our links should take account of this. With blog entries it usually isn't a problem, because a blog entry is mostly read when it is quite fresh.

The rules

You aren't allowed to copy and paste content from our pages into your blog or web site. This is for copyright reasons.

You are allowed and encouraged to make links to our pages from your blog or web site.

How to do it

1. Visit the page you want

First, go to the page that you want your link to point to. Note the web address that your browser reports. This is the address that you need to use.

If you can't reach the particular date you want, don't worry: we'll sort that out in a minute.

2. Check that the link identifies the correct date

If your link looks like this:

http://www.universalis.com/20090514/today.htm

then it is identifying a specific date, in year-month-day format. Check that it is identifying the date you want. If it isn't, change the 8-digit number so that it identifies the correct date.

If your link looks like this:

http://www.universalis.com/today.htm

then it is a link to today's Universalis page and will change from one day to the next. To anchor it to a particular date, insert the 8-digit date number for that date, as shown in the previous picture.

3. Check that the link is for the right local calendar

Most of the time, you will not need to bother with this section.

Different parts of the world use different local calendars, which differ from the General Calendar in various ways. For instance, some parts of the world celebrate Corpus Christi on a Thursday while other parts celebrate it on a Sunday.

The calendar you are currently using is Malta. If you want to change this, click here.

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

If you think there is a risk that a date will have a different feast in different places, make sure that your link includes a local calendar setting. If for any reason your browser doesn't include a local calendar in the address, use the Local Calendars page to find a link that does.