I don't think anyone can remember so many characters, let alone them being bothered to.
hubewa
Site name more than 30 characters / Discussion
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page Site name more than 30 characters.
This has nothing to do with the url, Hubert W, but the site name that is set through admin:manage -> general settings.
I am puzzled that you and others have given this a negative rating and can only assume it is because you didn't understand the difference between the site name and url and the impact the site name has. There are specific instances, though probably not very many, where the site name needs to be longer than 30 characters. I have one of those specific instances where a site I have to develop should have the site name "Lord Lieutenant of Ross and Cromarty". Abbreviating to Ross & Cromarty would be allowed but is also longer than 30 characters, and no other abbreviation will be accepted. It is currently Lord Lieutenant Ross Cromarty which is not what is wanted. It will come up again if or when I am asked to develop sites for the Lord Lieutenant of the Northern Isles or the Lord Lieutenant of the Western Isles.
The reason this is important
On the site itself I have used an image with the full title so that is fine. But the reason this is important is that google, bing and other search engines index our sites by what is in the site name box. Therefore it currently appears with an incorrect title in the search results on google and bing and the person I am developing the site for will not be happy when they realise this. I hadn't seen that this had been raised as a wish here on the community site so I also raised it as wish 340 on the pro site.
Rob
Rob Elliott - Strathpeffer, Scotland - member of the Wikidot first line support team.
Strathview ~ Wikidot-based wikis, websites & intranets and online database development
community groups, villages, charities, business and government.
Rob Elliot: How about LL R&C (in lowercase llr&c)?
A general rule with website names is to keep them short. Like for example, with Commonwealth Bank (In Australia), they shortened their name to commbank. Otherwise not as many people would go to the website and thus, the company is unprofitable.
I had a cousin who's site name was alphanumeric and was 18 characters long. That url was very hard remembering and I told him that site names should not be passwords as a joke.
I reckon it is unnecessary to do this. I'll cancel my negative vote but I still won't vote positive.
BTW, if it's the title you're talking about, there is a slight difference between title and site names.
hubewa
Like for example, with Commonwealth Bank (In Australia)
Hozah! Another Aussie!
Two is company, but three is a crowd Shane!
λ James Kanjo
Blog | Wikidot Expert | λ and Proud
Web Developer | HTML | CSS | JavaScript
Sorry about the misunderstanding. I will pull back what I said previously. Did not understand what you meant by site name. Next time, call it site title. Besides, that's what it is called in the admin panel.
(Cannot delete my own post here: URGH!)
hubewa
Next time, call it site title. Besides, that's what it is called in the admin panel.
The admin panel was recently changed to say "site title", and said "site name" previously (two days ago, in fact!)
http://www.wikidot.com/forum/t-184477/2009-09-24
Shane Smith ★ Website: Wikidot Development & Programming. ★ STE Wikidot Editor: Windows. Mac. Linux. ★ Twitter. Google+.
Yeah, thank god they changed it. It was way too ambiguous in forums — this one, being a prime example.
λ James Kanjo
Blog | Wikidot Expert | λ and Proud
Web Developer | HTML | CSS | JavaScript
How about LL R&C (in lowercase llr&c)?
No, I cannot use abbreviations in this case. Life would be simpler if I could.
Rob
Rob Elliott - Strathpeffer, Scotland - member of the Wikidot first line support team.
Strathview ~ Wikidot-based wikis, websites & intranets and online database development
community groups, villages, charities, business and government.
I'm not quite sure how changing it to "site title" actually makes it less confusing. Not that I never found it confusing in the first place: site name was the name of the site within wikidot, url was the url of the site. Simples :)
But if even this small change generally helps then that is a good thing.
Rob
Rob Elliott - Strathpeffer, Scotland - member of the Wikidot first line support team.
Strathview ~ Wikidot-based wikis, websites & intranets and online database development
community groups, villages, charities, business and government.
Ah yes, it is.
Rob Elliott - Strathpeffer, Scotland - member of the Wikidot first line support team.
Strathview ~ Wikidot-based wikis, websites & intranets and online database development
community groups, villages, charities, business and government.
idk why anyone would rate this down. its not going to effect there site if they want to keep it less than 30 characters, only help those who want it more than 30.
but for now, those who need it to be more than 30 characters could use the tagline and edit the css of it to look like the title, or, if you need more than 50 char, they could use both, then use CSS to put them right after one another.
It's not the way it looks in the site that is the problem, it is the way that it is returned in google or bing search results that is the problem. Look at the image below from bing. The first search result shows the correct title. The second, which is my site here on wikidot, is incorrect but is all I can do with the 30 character limit:
Rob
Rob Elliott - Strathpeffer, Scotland - member of the Wikidot first line support team.
Strathview ~ Wikidot-based wikis, websites & intranets and online database development
community groups, villages, charities, business and government.
Rob,
What if you changed CSS so the text title matches the background color and make the text size really small so it doesn't mess with the image.
Normally I wouldn't condone this, but given the situation it appears to be the only solution and the first time where I see the "hidden text" concept as acceptable.
Ken,
That still won't help with the search engine indexing. They are picking up the site title (which you see displayed in the title bar of your browser). The 30 character limit is what's causing the issue. All the other solutions like replacing the header with a graphic showing the desired title won't help to get the longer name Rob wants to use indexed properly.
-Ed
idk why anyone would rate this down
That also strikes me as odd (maybe even a little childish). Let people name their website however they want—and please remember that most languages have, in average, longer words than English, and that many Wikidot sites were NOT born and raised here (mine was migrated from Googlepages, where such restrictions do not exist, and I wish I could have kept its original, official title…).
Hehe kawina, I'm sure I saw this morning that you were one of the ones that had given it a negative rating. But if you have revised your opinion I thank you for that.
Rob
Rob Elliott - Strathpeffer, Scotland - member of the Wikidot first line support team.
Strathview ~ Wikidot-based wikis, websites & intranets and online database development
community groups, villages, charities, business and government.
:) thanks Kawina, and sorry if if I got it wrong!
Rob
Rob Elliott - Strathpeffer, Scotland - member of the Wikidot first line support team.
Strathview ~ Wikidot-based wikis, websites & intranets and online database development
community groups, villages, charities, business and government.
If you click on "rate" at the bottom of the wishlist page it gives you an option to view who gave a rating. That was how I knew what your previous rating was when I'd looked at it this morning. But I'm old and my eyesight is failing so I'm sure I read it wrong :)
Rob
Rob Elliott - Strathpeffer, Scotland - member of the Wikidot first line support team.
Strathview ~ Wikidot-based wikis, websites & intranets and online database development
community groups, villages, charities, business and government.
why is someone who deleted there account having a input on the overall rating? should there rating not be neutralized when they delete there account?
It's not the way it looks in the site that is the problem, it is the way that it is returned in google or bing search results that is the problem.
yea, i realized that after i had already posted that "solution"
No problem rhombus. I just hope there is not some impossible-to-solve technical issue or unix limitation that prevents Wikidot increasing the limit to 40 or 50 characters.
Rob
Rob Elliott - Strathpeffer, Scotland - member of the Wikidot first line support team.
Strathview ~ Wikidot-based wikis, websites & intranets and online database development
community groups, villages, charities, business and government.
I just took a peek at the site table structure on my WDOS server and the site table is set up to allow more characters. There must be some other length checking going on in the site creation code. From a technical standpoint, I don't believe there's any reason to limit the number of characters. The database can handle it just fine and I would think it's a simple change to make.
-Ed
| Field name | Type |
|---|---|
| name | varchar(50) |
| subtitle | varchar(60) |
| unix_name | varchar(80) |
This wish appears to have been implemented as I have just managed to change the site name to Lord Lieutenant of Ross and Cromarty which is 36 characters. Thanks to all the team for this. I'm not sure what the new limit is but personally I am very grateful for the increase as Google, Bing etc will index the site properly before too long. I'll have to finish the development now!
Rob Elliott - Strathpeffer, Scotland - member of the Wikidot first line support team.
Strathview ~ Wikidot-based wikis, websites & intranets and online database development
community groups, villages, charities, business and government.
See the 2009-10-28 changelog. Site name went to 50 characters and site title and tagline to 200 characters.
-Ed
/forum/t-64663/site-name-more-than-30-characters#post-
