No problem, there's no rush - I will test if the idea's feasible.

I don't think this idea is a work around. It's essentially returning the URL back to how it was before communities existed - where the first tag defines the internal (and therefore external) link.

Instead of the internal link being:

/(hive-xxxxxx)/(username)/(permlink)

It's

/(1st-tag)/(username)/(permlink)

If the community makes more sense, it could probably be:

/(communityName)/(username)/(permlink)

without too much effort.

It feels like a fairly elegant and straightforward solution.

A question for me is what happens to the SEO value of these posts if a community decides to change name. Which makes my current preference using the 1st tag (non hive-xxxx).