Increase thread title length

A

Aivaras

Well-known member
Here is my situation:

I use thread title fields to input the titles of real publications. About 30% of them have titles that are longer than the present 100 character limit applied by XenForo to thread titles.

Please, increase the maximum character length of thread titles to accommodate many cases of what titles actually are in the world of literature and writing in general.
 
Upvote 13
jamalfree said:
should be a field in the setting and can we choose number character of title
Click to expand...
The thread title is store as 'varchar' which in newer version of mysql supports a length of 65,535, however in mysql versions previous to 5.0.3 varchar length can only be up to 150 (current setting in db structure) and since the xf requirement for mysql is version >=5.0 a change like that would besides requiring the obvious addition of that code for that option you were talking about, would also either require the datatype the title is stored as changing (if desired title length is > 150) or xf would have to drop support for mysql <5.0.3 and increase the value to what the maximum option length could be set at.

That said, I don't disagree with your idea because I can see cases where it is validly needed though I don't know if I have ever needed a title longer that 150 characters personally.

I am just pointing out that if I were responsible for making these choices/changes...I would consider it for the 2.0 rewrite rather than changing the db structure for what exists currently but again that is just my opinion considering all realities of the situation. It is also my opinion that if your host is still running a 12 year old version of mysql that you should consider switching hosts, so I see no reason in a 2.0 xf release to not raise the minimum mysql version to >=5.1 as 5.0.x had it's last release in march of 2012 and is now EOL.
 
I'll repost some of the reasons why the present character limit is a serious issue for some forums (taken from the XF2 demo site before it vanishes) and why increasing it in the upcoming XF2 would be an advance:

Let's take a random example of a list of topics from a forum dedicated to academics:
  • Description of Markets, Optimising Tools and Cost-effective IT Solutions for the Balancing System (97)
  • Dimensionless Numbers Used to Characterize Stratification in Water Tanks for Discharging at Low Flow Rates (106)
  • The Effectiveness of Storage and Relocation Options in Renewable Energy Systems (79)
  • Thermal Energy Storage: Systems and Applications (48)
  • A Model to Design and Optimize Multi-energy Systems in Buildings at the Design Concept Stage (92)
  • Thermal Stratification within the Water Tank (44)
  • Exploration of Economical Sizing of Gas Engine ant Thermal Store for Combined Heat and Power Plants in the UK (109)
  • The Case Study as a Research Method (35)
  • The New German CHP Law – Criteria and Expectations (50)
  • Twostep Decision and Optimisation Model for Centralised or Decentralised Thermal Storage in DH & C Systems (106)
  • Thermodynamic and Economic Analysis of Heat Storage Application in Co-generation Systems (88)
  • Optimal Design of Small CHP Plants in a Market with Fluctuating Electricity Prices (82)
  • Constructing Load Profiles for Household Electricity and Hot Water from Time-use Data – Modelling Approach and Validation (121)
  • Case Study: A Strategic Research Methodology (44)
  • Controlling Micro-CHP Systems to Modulate Electrical Load Profiles (66)
  • Exergy Methods for Assessing and Comparing Thermal Storage System (65)
  • Renewable Energy: Its Physics, Engineering, Use, Environmental Impacts, Economy and Planning Aspects (100)
  • Feasibility of CHP-plants with Thermal Stores in the German Spot Market (71)
  • Multiple Criteria Assessment of Alternatives for Built and Human Environment Renovation (87)

As you can see, titles longer than 100 characters is a fact of life in some areas of interest, and not a rare one.

Also, the English language should not be taken for a standard here because there are languages that tend to empoy more characters. That is to say, 100 characters in English may be an equivalent of 120 characters in another language.

Overall, 200 characters would be a pretty safe bet (I'm talking here from experience of working with long titles in different languages).
It does not mean users are forced to use that many. But, please, allow to do so if there is a need!

Why not increase those limits and make them definable via ACP just like you have it with messages (i.e. ACP > Home > Options > Messages > Maximum Message Length)?
 
What is interesting is that I see a lot of large websites using longer than 50 characters for article titles. I suspect this is done for SEO reasons though when you Google title length for SEO you get 50 to 65 characters.

To make it more interesting is I gave ChatGPT an article and asked it to create a SEO friendly title and it was over 100 characters in length. I would be interested in perspective of others of what thread / article titles should look like for SEO.
 
AndrewSimm said:
What is interesting is that I see a lot of large websites using longer than 50 characters for article titles. I suspect this is done for SEO reasons though when you Google title length for SEO you get 50 to 65 characters.

To make it more interesting is I gave ChatGPT an article and asked it to create a SEO friendly title and it was over 100 characters in length. I would be interested in perspective of others of what thread / article titles should look like for SEO.
Click to expand...
Someone mentioned in another thread that they wanted to decrease the title length for SEO purposes, but Google loves Reddit and Reddit has a 300 character limit.
 

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