This has to do with the pseudo-integration with OJS. All of our OJS links in navigation or custom pages redirect to our categories on pubpub. Unfortunately, pubpub menu items can only link to internal links. I tried to include an html block on https://cursor.pubpub.org/print to redirect automatically to https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/cursor_test/print/ but I guess js is disabled.
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Yup, we should do this. Will add to roadmap.
Only thing I’m trying to think through is whether there’s any risk of abuse? I think Medium argued that at one point. But mostly the justifications for not allowing site-wide external links feel like they stem more from wanting to keep readers on-platform to boost metrics, which isn’t a goal of ours.
In the very short term, you can use banner blocks to link externally on key pages.
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The only security risk I’ve heard about with external links is if you force them into a new tab: https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Reverse_Tabnabbing
This is easily fixed if you do set target=_blank - and isn’t a concern if the external link is loaded in the same tab.
I can’t figure out what abuse Medium would’ve claimed is possible - other than phishing scams on sites that look identical. But, that’s going to be a problem with any external link in any site.
is this feature available with the newest update? Otherwise we have to figure out how to do ideally seamless redirects from html pages in pubpub 
Unfortunately, no. But there’s a ticket for it and we can prioritize it in the next few weeks if you’re finding yourself needing it soon.
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That would be cool! Our higher-ed publisher wants our users to download final pdfs through their OJS and we’d like to minimize redundancy or glitches in the user experience.
Ah. Allowing the download to reference a link is actually a separate thing that we had planned on, but it looks like a ticket didn’t get made.
Here’s a ticket for that:
Yes, I know. I meant the other thing (direct URL in horizontal menu to publisher’s download page), but external URLs for download buttons are useful as well. Thanks a lot!
Ah, I see, sorry. Can you send an example of what their OJS download page looks like? Haven’t seen/heard of that before.
like this: https://heiup.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/index.php/cursor/issue/view/2392
It would be good to have a download button for a collection/issue (that would then correspond to the pdf of the full issue hosted on OJS), and a download button per pub/paper corresponding to the individual pdfs on OJS. This would help them measure realistic download metrics.
Hey Thomas!
We’ve got external links in the nav bar now.
I agree we should allow it for downloads. We’re about to overhaul Pub settings – once we do that, should be pretty simple to do for featured downloads. I’ll make sure to bring it up in prio next week.
Gabe
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Yes, we’re already using external links in the nav bar.
Maybe it would be sufficient to give authors and publishers permission to add the first entry of the dropdown menu that appears when clicking on download?
Another idea would be to add some kind of 
button to each pub where authors and publishers can put links to other relevant places: project pages, other instances of that publication, a video of the talk and so on.