This section on the Community is no longer supported, in favour of Wikidot's Official Feedback Site.
It is retained here for archiving purposes.
Wish List
Tags
Posted by Phil Chett on 05 Jun 2008 11:41, last edited on 07 Nov 2009 13:14
This wish has been granted |
Description
One of my sites' name is longer than the 30 characters allowed; thus, because of the 30 character limit, I had to leave the name incomplete. That was the original name (before I migrated to Wikidot), so I would prefer to keep it.
Links to forum Posts
Site name: more than 30 characters, please?
Rate this Wish
We encourage you to "rate" the suggestions. The higher the rating, the better the chance of the wish being granted (well, possibly).
I don't think anyone can remember so many characters, let alone them being bothered to.
hubewa
I think site name is different to site URL. Thus, noone would need to remember it.
~ Shane (Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer)
Wikidot: Wikidot Editor, Official Docs
Other: YouTube (gaming, primarily Minecraft)
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 - Wikidot first line support & community admin team.
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
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
Too True :)
Hubert W :)
Welcome to the community
~ Shane (Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer)
Wikidot: Wikidot Editor, Official Docs
Other: YouTube (gaming, primarily Minecraft)
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
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 (Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer)
Wikidot: Wikidot Editor, Official Docs
Other: YouTube (gaming, primarily Minecraft)
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
No, I cannot use abbreviations in this case. Life would be simpler if I could.
Rob
Rob Elliott - Strathpeffer, Scotland - Wikidot first line support & community admin team.
The term 'site name' was terribly confusing, I never knew what it referred to. Thankfully it's changed now (Helmuti's suggestion, iirc).
Portfolio
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 - Wikidot first line support & community admin team.
It is now consistent with page name and page title
~ Shane (Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer)
Wikidot: Wikidot Editor, Official Docs
Other: YouTube (gaming, primarily Minecraft)
Ah yes, it is.
Rob Elliott - Strathpeffer, Scotland - Wikidot first line support & community admin team.
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.
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 - Wikidot first line support & community admin team.
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
Community Admin
Ahh got it
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…).
Eduardo R. Ribeiro
http://www.etnolinguistica.org
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 - Wikidot first line support & community admin team.
No way, I'm the one who suggested it in the first place! I was glad to see that, at least, the rating is no longer negative. Maybe we'll get there. Keep the faith!
Eduardo R. Ribeiro
http://www.etnolinguistica.org
:) thanks Kawina, and sorry if if I got it wrong!
Rob
Rob Elliott - Strathpeffer, Scotland - Wikidot first line support & community admin team.
By the way, how does one know how one voted? It would be ironic if I mistakenly voted against my wish…
Eduardo R. Ribeiro
http://www.etnolinguistica.org
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 - Wikidot first line support & community admin team.
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?
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 - Wikidot first line support & community admin team.
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
Community Admin
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 - Wikidot first line support & community admin team.
See the 2009-10-28 changelog. Site name went to 50 characters and site title and tagline to 200 characters.
-Ed
Community Admin