What's in a Web Name?

What's in a Web Name?

The titles of content items, including folders, images, pages, etc., have no restrictions -- you can use any keyboard characters, including blanks. Titles, however, become part of web addresses.  Web addresses, also known as URLs (Universal Resource Locators), are what you type in a web browser to go to a specific location in a web site (Or, you would click your way there), such as:

www.mysite.com/about/personnel/sally/bio

www.mysite.com/images/butterflies/skippers/long-tailed-skippers

Such web addresses do have restrictions on allowed keyboard characters, and blanks are not allowed. Plone does a good job of keeping web addresses correct by using near-equivalents of the titles we provide, by changing into lowercase and by substituting dashes for punctuation.   To illustrate, let's take each of these two web addresses and split them out into their component parts:

www.mysite.com/about/personnel/sally/bio
^ 
website name
               ^ 
               a folder named About
                     ^ 
                     a folder named Personnel
                               ^ 
                               a folder named Sally
                                     ^ 
                                     a folder named Bio

In this first example, not much was needed: Plone changed each folder title to lowercase, e.g., from Personnel to personnel.  You don't have to worry about this. Plone handles the web addressing; you just type in titles however you want.

The second example web address demonstrates how Plone takes the hassle out of web addressing:

www.mysite.com/images/butterflies/skippers/long-tailed-skippers
^
website name
               ^
               a folder named Images
                      ^
                      a folder named Butterflies
                                  ^
                                  a folder named Skippers
                                           ^
                                           a folder named Long-tailed Skippers

As with the first example, Plone simply changed the folder titles into lowercase for web addressing, except for the last one, which is more than one word and contains a dash.  The dash in "Long-tailed Skippers" is fine for the web address, and it remains.  The blank, however, was changed to a dash also.  And the L in Long and the S in Skippers were changed to lowercase.  You need to understand that Plone is doing this for you, but you don't have to worry about it. You would have simply typed "Long-tailed Skippers" for the title and Plone would handle the web addressing. The web address is referred to as the short name within Plone. When you rename something, you'll see the short name along with the title.

These illustrations apply to all content items, not just folders, so when you type in titles, use normal titles that have blanks and punctuation as you wish, but be aware that when you copy a Plone web address for making a link or for sharing with someone, the web address will be a little bit different (which is a good thing -- a necessary fix for web addressing).