in progress Confusing Page Titles

I often have more than one tab open and when two or more of (different) pages are titled "Home" it can get confusing. IMO, the only page that should have the title "Home" is the actual Home page.

How and where the page name gets assigned does not appear to be consistent.

1) Page titles Search results page and sub-pages. The page title is NOT set either in language string id=2 or by the module URL.

2) Page title Groups. Changing the module URL changes the page name.

3) Page title Forums. The page title is set in language string id=36, which is also used as the text for the left-most tab.

4) Page title Events. Changing the module URL changes the page name.

5) Page title Private Notes. The page title is set in language string id=2 (and the "home" page is for some reason at .../note/notes not .../notes).


updated by @claygordon: 03/15/15 06:22:21AM

I'm starting to feel a little bit bad here Clay - seems like there's 10+ issues every day on your site, and while we're trying hard to help out and identify the issues, I hope you're not getting frustrated.

1) Search results can contain results from many modules..

2) Isn't this correct?

3) I'm guessing you want those separated?

4) Again - isn't that correct?

5) note/notes is correct - "note" => Module URL (required) - "notes" - this is the VIEW function that is run IN the "note" module. If you type in yoursite.com/notes then that will load the "notes.tpl" file from your SKIN - it's not a module view.


--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

Brian -

I am not getting frustrated - progress is being made. No progress == frustration.

Part of the challenge is the modularity which leads to complexity for someone who's not proficient as a coder and who isn't diving deep into the code every day. My issues are related to navigating that complexity.

a) is there some combination of configurations that I don't understand how they work so when I create those combinations I am the source of the problem.

b) what is legitimately a bug or UX issue on your part.

As someone who's spent a lot of years providing customer support I try very hard to give you as much information as a I can to help you figure things out. One thing that happens as a result of my doing this is that a solutions occur to me and I am able to fix the problem.

Mis-configuration is an issue. When thinking about where the names for page titles came from I regularized most of the URLs to end in "s". However I forgot the actual URL was set in the skin global config.


I some respects I am your worst kind of user - I know some stuff, but not enough. My numbered list in my OP was to show the inconsistency, not to suggest an answer to the problem, which I would guess is non-trivial.

1) Yes, search results come from many modules. But the title of search results pages should be " Search Results ". Home is just wrong.

2) This is very straightforward, but it's not consistent.

3) Reusing the same string in multiple contexts is always an implementation issue that someone (me!) is going to have a problem with in the future. I know it's there to make translations possible. But I've had to go in and hard code some names into the template files because changing a word in a language file changed the word in other places, too.

This is a real issue (for me) in the CSS. The same class gets used in unexpected ways and changing a property in one place shows changes in other places in unexpected ways. For example, in Forums all the links are underlined. However, links in other places (in the Latest Forum Posts) inherit the color but not the text-decoration property. Arrrrggghghghghghghhhh. As I said in another post there is a reason I don't do this for a living.

4) This is very straightforward, but, again, it's not consistent. The URL is not used as the page title everywhere.

5) This makes sense once it's explained, it's just that it's the only URL that's formed this way so it stood out, but just because because I was looking at the ways page titles were generated. Note the the first "note" in .../note/notes/ is from the URL in the module info, but the page title is a language string. So it's consistent at one level and not at another.

None of this is wrong or bad -- it reflects the evolution of a complex product developed over the course of a decade or more. It's just that it makes it harder, for some people (me!), to troubleshoot problems.

It would make the most sense (to me) to move the page title into the module language file and put it right above the menu name. That way it would be unambiguous. And easy to find.

:: Clay