Should we be linking to the official Lego site or other third-party sites?

Question

I've seen people linking to the official Lego site for sets/parts. Should we be linking to the official Lego site or other third-party sites?

Answer 1

I started linking directly to LEGO.com, but have recently come round to the option of linking elsewhere - sets are removed out of the LEGO Store pages as the sets are removed from production - meaning that our links will be broken and out of date.

One option to consider is to start using the (currently client-side) mechanism we've been putting together to link in images and sets from Code To Link Parts.

This will enable you to write something like [set:5590] or [bs:5590] or [bl:5590] and have it link to that set on one of the various listings sites. Another advantage of doing it this way is that if one of them goes down, we can always switch the script over to one of the others.

If enough people show an interest in it, we can probably get it added server side.

Answer 2

I prefer linking to Brickset for sets and to Peeron for parts.

Indeed, linking to LEGO itself is usually not reliable, as LEGO tends to be bad about keeping archive of past stuff in general.

The problem I have with peeron is that it's sometimes slow, but its parts inventory matches LDraw's so I prefer it to BrickLink. For sets howevre, I feel Brickset is unmatched.