Found something worth passing on? Sharing a story is as simple as
sending its address.
The short way
Open the story and copy the address from your browser's address bar, or
use your device's usual share control if it offers one. Paste it into a
message, an email or a chat.
A story address looks like this:
https://www.outastory.com/stories/the-name-of-the-story
That is the story's page — cover, description, chapters and comments.
It is the right thing to send in almost every case.
What the person you sent it to sees
They do not need an account. Published stories are public: your
friend can open the link, read the description and read the story
without signing up for anything.
Two things do need an account, and they will be prompted for one at the
moment they try:
- Leaving a comment or a rating.
- Reading anything with an age rating above their own. A signed-out
visitor sees only stories suitable for the youngest audience, so a
link to an older-audience story shows a sign-in prompt rather than the
text. That is deliberate, and it is explained in
Age ratings explained.
Sending someone a particular chapter
A serial's Instalments list links each part separately, so you can
copy the address of a specific instalment and send that instead. It
opens at that part's own beginning. See
Reading a serial in the right
order.
Sharing your decorated version
If you have decorated a story in the reader, you can send a gift
link that shows your friend the story with your decoration on it. That
is a different thing from an ordinary link and has its own article:
Gifting a story.
What an outa.at link is
You may receive an OutaStory link that looks much shorter, like:
https://outa.at/k7Bq2m
That is one of our own short links. We use them in newsletters and on
social media because they fit where a long address does not. Opening one
simply forwards you to the matching page on OutaStory — there is nothing
different about the destination.
Two things worth knowing:
- You cannot make one yourself. Short links are created by
OutaStory, not by readers. To share a story, copy its ordinary
address; it works exactly as well. - They can stop working. A short link may be given an end date. If
an old one from a newsletter no longer opens, search for the story by
name instead — see Finding stories to
read.
Where a link opens
On a phone or tablet with the OutaStory app installed, many OutaStory
links open the app instead of the browser. Some pages deliberately stay
in the browser. Which is which is explained in the
Apps and platforms section.
If a link opens somewhere you did not expect, nothing has gone wrong and
nothing is lost — the page is the same either way.