Random game link failing

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Exemptus
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Re: Random game link failing

#16 Post by Exemptus » Sun Dec 29, 2019 12:07 am

Garry wrote:
Sat Dec 28, 2019 12:34 am
And you shouldn't use underscores '_' as a separator in filenames for screen grabs, maps and solutions. Once again, you should use hyphens '-'.
May I ask why? It is a long standing convention to replace spaces with underscores for filenames in many file systems. I don't have a problem with using hyphens instead, of course, it's just personal curiosity. The '+' I can understand, as some OSs will not like it, but it is rarer to find a system which chokes on the underscore. As a contributor I'm happy to abide by the rules, but it is always useful to know the reasons.

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Garry
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Re: Random game link failing

#17 Post by Garry » Mon Dec 30, 2019 4:44 am

It's related to search engine optimisation. Underscores are removed and the words blend into one. For example, "game_name" becomes "gamename" and that word will not rate very highly. Whereas "game-name" becomes "game name" and that will rate highly.

The plus sign has a special meaning to web apps when parsing the file name.

I'm not professing to be an expert on this. It's just based on a few SEO articles I read when looking up how search engines deal with file names. For example: https://www.mtu.edu/umc/services/digita ... ers-avoid/.

And I'm not suggesting that CASA change all its file names, as that would be a huge job. It could be automated, but links from other sites would then break.

Mr Creosote
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Re: Random game link failing

#18 Post by Mr Creosote » Mon Dec 30, 2019 8:16 am

+ is the RFC standardized way to encode a space in an URI. - is a non-standardized Google convention, which I believe they introduced for better human readability compared to a +. Since the idea is for this part of the URI to attract bots rather than humans, I don't think it matters. Unless Google disregards the RFC, that is, which obviously I wouldn't put past them, being the most evil company in the world ever.

The discussion of characters to avoid in a file name is a different, unrelated one. As you already surmised, these game titles in the URI are not actual file names, but they are purely superfluous fake.

Jacob, switching to any other character to encode spaces in the URIs is a change of one line of code. So if you'd like to go the Google way (probably not a horrible idea, considering they are the only relevant search engine in the English speaking world), it's easy.

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Gunness
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Re: Random game link failing

#19 Post by Gunness » Mon Jan 06, 2020 2:59 pm

Good news first: Hannes has updated the code, and to the best of my knowledge, the / errors have vanished. I have renamed the first games with such titles that I'm aware of, and they appear to be working now :thumb:

Regarding the general remarks:
As the site's Google page rank indicates, I don't know anything about modern SEO.
I hope that people will find the site via each game's page rather than directly via files.
The site has some file naming conventions which are probably esoteric by current standards. The site's roots are 20 years old and it shows. But as Garry indicates, it's not going to change without causing a heap of issues with other sites.

Anyway, much as I'd love for CASA to get more attention, I honestly (and naively?) don't believe that it's down to the file names.
Mr Creosote wrote:
Mon Dec 30, 2019 8:16 am
Jacob, switching to any other character to encode spaces in the URIs is a change of one line of code. So if you'd like to go the Google way (probably not a horrible idea, considering they are the only relevant search engine in the English speaking world), it's easy.
Ok, if it's not much hassle, please make it so :) Thanks!

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