CheersnGears Posted March 1, 2015 Posted March 1, 2015 I understand that the topic title length appears to be hard code limited to 250 characters?I want the ability to limit this. Even though responsive design does its best to fix this, it still doesn't look great and I would like the ability back to limit it.
Management Charles Posted March 1, 2015 Management Posted March 1, 2015 If we were to add this there a few caveats:Limiting by character count is not a good way to control length. There are lots of very-wide but valid characters so even with a 50 character limit you could still create titles with effective lengths that make things look really long. So you are not really fixing anything.It would be Suite-wide not just limited to forum topics.
SJ77 Posted March 1, 2015 Posted March 1, 2015 Couldn't it be set up so each admin can live with the consequences of their own hard limit settings?
Management Charles Posted March 1, 2015 Management Posted March 1, 2015 Couldn't it be set up so each admin can live with the consequences of their own hard limit settings? I realize most people fall back to the "make it a setting" stance - which is often what we end up doing - but we try to think it through before doing anything. Sometimes you need settings and other times a setting means a badly implemented feature. So we do try to think through the consequences of what we do In this case we would need to be sure to explain to admins that limiting characters is not really a 100% method which would be confusing to some. So it's a balancing act as you can see.
CheersnGears Posted March 1, 2015 Author Posted March 1, 2015 I realize most people fall back to the "make it a setting" stance - which is often what we end up doing - but we try to think it through before doing anything. Sometimes you need settings and other times a setting means a badly implemented feature. So we do try to think through the consequences of what we do In this case we would need to be sure to explain to admins that limiting characters is not really a 100% method which would be confusing to some. So it's a balancing act as you can see. the combination of our own responsibility and responsive design will make it work I think .
Management Charles Posted March 1, 2015 Management Posted March 1, 2015 the combination of our own responsibility and responsive design will make it work I think .Yes I think we can do something.
WOFman Posted March 1, 2015 Posted March 1, 2015 See, developers are going to provide the things you need.
esquire Posted March 1, 2015 Posted March 1, 2015 Limiting by character count is not a good way to control length. There are lots of very-wide but valid characters so even with a 50 character limit you could still create titles with effective lengths that make things look really long. So you are not really fixing anything.It would be Suite-wide not just limited to forum topics.Charles, I am honestly asking whether issues such as engine optimization ("SEO"), real world webmastering and programming were taken into consideration. What you describe is an Adobe type course on how the Mac isn't a typewriter, being the difference between monospaced and proportional fonts. I don't know a single forum administrator that used the topic title limit because of what you're saying. It didn't make sense to me the first time either, which refers to consideration for emojis being placed in topic titles -- probably the last thing that most administrators and especially SEOs would want. My concerns are that this is not the only area which reflects these deficiencies.
Management Charles Posted March 1, 2015 Management Posted March 1, 2015 I am afraid I am not following what you are getting at here. I'm not sure how a setting to allow the admin to optionally limit the number of characters in a title is relevant to SEO.
esquire Posted March 1, 2015 Posted March 1, 2015 See, developers are going to provide the things you need.There is a reason why IPS 3, vBulletin, Xenforo and any professional piece of software has had settings like these in forums since the dawn of time. If now they are going to be made into an unofficial plugin (among other things) then it's something that I think will be a concern for many experienced forum admins.
Marius Posted March 1, 2015 Posted March 1, 2015 I am afraid I am not following what you are getting at here. I'm not sure how a setting to allow the admin to optionally limit the number of characters in a title is relevant to SEO.Topic title should not be short, but not very long.Six (6) words must have a title to be easily memorized. Scientifical studies have established that a man remembers the first three and last three words in any way.Search engines ignore connecting words and most of abbreviations and the remaining together must have a certain length. It is recommended that the title contains between 5 and 6 words that describe the content and be reflected in the text on the page.An ideal length of the title is 55-60 characters, including spaces and punctuation. If the title is too long, search engines displays only a portion of the title in search results pages.
Management Charles Posted March 1, 2015 Management Posted March 1, 2015 Well that may or may not be so but we are talking about giving Admin control of this here which is what topic is about.
CheersnGears Posted March 1, 2015 Author Posted March 1, 2015 Another thing about long topic titles. They end up getting cut off in RSS feeds/readers as well. I don't know what the typical number is at, but it is well below 250 char.
Izaya Orihara Posted March 1, 2015 Posted March 1, 2015 There is a reason why IPS 3, vBulletin, Xenforo and any professional piece of software has had settings like these in forums since the dawn of time. If now they are going to be made into an unofficial plugin (among other things) then it's something that I think will be a concern for many experienced forum admins.I am an experienced admin and I am not concerned that there is a plugin(Unofficial or not). SO now that there is a plugin there is one less thing to check off. For now we have the ability to limit topic titles length and perhaps this is something they can release AFTER they do gold 4.0.So we have a solution to one problem....let's not nitpick about it.
openfire Posted March 2, 2015 Posted March 2, 2015 I am an experienced admin and now that there is a plugin there is one less thing to check off. For now we have the ability to limit topic titles length and perhaps this is something they can release AFTER they do gold 4.0.So we have a solution to one problem....let's not nitpick about it.... Until he upgrades, uses the plugin, and the plugin author abandons the plugin prior to the next release.This setting would be a small and easy implementation for IPS and should be in the core IMO.
esquire Posted March 2, 2015 Posted March 2, 2015 ... Until he upgrades, uses the plugin, and the plugin author abandons the plugin prior to the next release.This setting would be a small and easy implementation for IPS and should be in the core IMO.Or until IPS changes something in the core, breaking the plugin, and then you only realize it after it has been abused up the wazoo, maybe by a spammer. Or maybe you didn't realize that your titles are slightly longer than they used to be, changing the way they may appear in places that are really, really important. And then you've got to figure out how to truncate those titles (and corresponding URLs) and wait until that plugin is updated. There is a good reason why things like this have always been in the core, not a plugin.
esquire Posted March 2, 2015 Posted March 2, 2015 I am afraid I am not following what you are getting at here. I'm not sure how a setting to allow the admin to optionally limit the number of characters in a title is relevant to SEO.Then I suggest you have someone look at SEO for the first time. Try running your 247 character optimized responsive titles through even the most basic SEO checker online - and I mean the most basic. You may be surprised by what you find as this has been around for many years.
Izaya Orihara Posted March 2, 2015 Posted March 2, 2015 ... Until he upgrades, uses the plugin, and the plugin author abandons the plugin prior to the next release.This setting would be a small and easy implementation for IPS and should be in the core IMO.Now we are nitpicking. Come on now...we're better than that and it then comes off as whining.We're in the RC stage now. We got a fix for it. I do not want IPS to rush back in and start trying to add features and then going right back to how we were in beta stage with this bug or that bug.We have a temporary fix....let's be happy with that and let's focus on making IPB4 good and then stuff like this can be implemented by 4.0.1 shortly after.Or until IPS changes something in the core, breaking the plugin, and then you only realize it after it has been abused up the wazoo, maybe by a spammer. Or maybe you didn't realize that your titles are slightly longer than they used to be, changing the way they may appear in places that are really, really important. And then you've got to figure out how to truncate those titles (and corresponding URLs) and wait until that plugin is updated. There is a good reason why things like this have always been in the core, not a plugin.Geez you guys are so 'Doom and gloom' and looking at the glass half empty. We have a temporary fix. Regardless of the reasoning of removing it(I agree it probably shouldn't have been removed) And people are still complaining for the sake of complaining.First...it was because we lost the ability.Now...it's because it is not core and plug-in.
esquire Posted March 2, 2015 Posted March 2, 2015 @Dorian Gray - you're free to do whatever you want. For many of us it is "been there, done that, won't get burned again." I've got a lot riding on IPS 4 - why would I want to trash it or needlessly nitpick after waiting 2+ years? I have every reason to want to see it succeed and donated a lot of time initially making suggestions based upon running many different types of large sites for a very long time. What is an "RC" stage? vBulletin called their shlock vB 4 a Release Candidate and then quickly gold. It took them almost a year to make it actually usable on a real forum so that bug fix upgrades wouldn't break every version badly each time you installed every much needed bug fixing upgrade. So I look at these titles as totally meaningless. You could call the product IPS X and skip numbers 4-9, which makes it sound better. But the product is what it is. And when you take away core admin functions that are in EVERY professional foruming software, ask yourself whether it seems wise to now make this a side addon that IPS will NOT take into account as it continues to develop their software. Wishing you best of luck, most sincerely.
3DKiwi Posted March 2, 2015 Posted March 2, 2015 Topic titles will also get truncated in IP Content / IP Pages created blocks e.g. New Topic block. If it's good enough to truncate there then it's good enough to give admins the control should they want it to control the length opf titles in regular forums.
ZakRhyno Posted March 3, 2015 Posted March 3, 2015 I realize most people fall back to the "make it a setting" stance - which is often what we end up doing - but we try to think it through before doing anything. Sometimes you need settings and other times a setting means a badly implemented feature. So we do try to think through the consequences of what we do In this case we would need to be sure to explain to admins that limiting characters is not really a 100% method which would be confusing to some. So it's a balancing act as you can see. Why not just limited to forums only and not suite wide?
CheersnGears Posted March 3, 2015 Author Posted March 3, 2015 Why not just limited to forums only and not suite wide?Because it is bad for SEO regardless of where it is on your site. Page titles should not be longer than about 75 Char... 150 char is really pushing it. You'll start getting dinged by Google in Webmaster tools for having page titles that are too long.
ZakRhyno Posted March 3, 2015 Posted March 3, 2015 Because it is bad for SEO regardless of where it is on your site. Page titles should not be longer than about 75 Char... 150 char is really pushing it. You'll start getting dinged by Google in Webmaster tools for having page titles that are too long.I can see that. They why not just add the option back to the ACP and let the wwners choose how they like to approach it and not make it a define this way or the highway?
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