Forum:Searching and sorting issues

I put my searching and sorting questions together:
 * 1. How can I get a prefix to display in the pagname, without having the prefix in the pagename for sorting purposes? : Background: My wikia, The Top 10, has lists of Top 10s in any subject... In order to have alphabetic sorting NOT all lumped under "T", I've adopted the naming convention where "The Top 10" is NOT part of the article/page name.  e.g. "The Top 10 Guitarists" pagename is "Guitarists]]".  However, I think the readers prefer to see the prefix "The Top 10" in the page title; 99.5% of the Top 10 pages will be Top 10 lists, with the others "stubs".  It seems this is a common convention and syntax in Wikipedia, but not a feature in Wikia. --Dreams2go 12:45, 25 May 2006 (UTC)  p.s. in this example the prefix I want is also the SITENAME.


 * There are a few ways to do this. One is to have your articles in the project namespace.  This is usually used for pages about the project (such as policy pages) but there is no reason why you can't do things differently.  So the article would have at The Top 10:Guitarists.  Or you could change the name of the project namespace, leaving that title free for a custom namespace.  That would prevent confusion to people who expect the project namespace to be for project pages and not content (you need technical help to do it this way).  Or you could leave things as they are, but sort using pipes.  For example, if "Guitarists" goes in "Category:music" then you put the category on the page as  .  It will then be sorted on the category page under G. -- sannse (talk) 12:48, 26 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Sannse, the "pipes" feature you describe above does not work in Wikia - I know it works in Wikipedia. Is this a Wikia bug, or was it intentionally turned off?  If it works, the problem would be solved.  That is why I've been naming pages without "top 10" in the title, because I never could get pipes to work - and I just tried it again before responding.  --Dreams2go 11:23, 27 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I've just had a go, with w:c:top10:Test page. That's in w:c:top10:Category:New under "n" rather than "t".  The title shown in the category is still "test page", but it is sorted by the piped text - that's how  it's supposed to work.  What pages did you have a problem sorting in this way?  Perhaps it was a caching thing? -- sannse (talk) 22:33, 27 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you for looking into this. I guess I was expecting the result to be not only sorted under the "n" but to display a "not T", but it displayed as Test.  Meaning I will see the prefix "Top 10" for all pages (if I move all the pages to that naming convention) in all Category TOC - but it might be better than nothing, so I'll think about changing to pipes.  That is not how it is explained in Wikipedia, Meta, wherever tutorial - so their pipe tutorial is not entirely accurate.  Thanks, though.  I'll mull it over.  I want a consistent naming standard, and some both users and Google searches will like.    --Dreams2go 23:13, 27 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Another method is to use subpages. You can have a page (for example) Top 10 and then have subpages of it Top 10/Guitarists. This is like a step down from a namespace. The benifit of this is: In magic words, there is (or will be when we next upgrade) a 'magic word' to reference just the sub page: . With this, you could put in a template  and it would then sort them in the category by the first character after the "/" slash. Or, if you are ambitious, just categorize each manually, eg: on Top 10 Guitarists or Top 10/Guitarists put in a category:  (same difference). Splarka 02:54, 28 May 2006 (UTC)


 * 2. How can I add a prefix, i.e. "The Top 10", in the meta data for the xml/html header, for purposes of searching for the page(s) in Google or Qwika, the wiki search engine? Or what can I do to get included in Google search results? : I've tried testing searches, and these pages simply don't appear. I've tried various examples, but here's an example so obsure I expected Google or Qwika to find it. Searching for the "Top 10 Things a Teenage Boy Wants for his Birthday" I searched these 3 different strings in both Qwika and Google: 1- Things a Teenage Boy Wants for his Birthday; 2- Top 10 Things a Teenage Boy Wants for his Birthday; and 3- "Top 10" "Things a Teenage Boy Wants for his Birthday".  Each came up with different volumes, but I went 30 pages deep in reviewing search results, per search per Google/Qwika, before giving up.  This is extremely discouraging.  How to build a community on a desert island no one will ever find? (except a couple vandals seemed to find it.) (btw, I know the xml in the source for concatenates the SITENAME as a suffix to the article pagename.) --Dreams2go 12:45, 25 May 2006 (UTC)


 * 3. Is there an easy/scripted way to automatically add keywords and other info to the meta data in the page header of an article? : Again, the problem I'm trying to solve is to increase visibility on Google, Qwika, and other searches. Meanwhile, I have no previous experience xml/html page header, but have looked at the source.  For many Top 10 topics, I've also added links where appropriate from a related Wikipedia article. --Dreams2go 12:45, 25 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Keywords come from the title of the article, and the first few links. From what I understand, these are no longer that important to Google - they have been misused too much and so are less weighted.  links are more important, so the links you have added will help. -- sannse (talk) 12:48, 26 May 2006 (UTC)


 * 4. Is Wikia.com, the company, doing anything to help provide visibility or are all the wikia on their own? : Is there/Can a strength in numbers strategy by Wikia help to increase the exposure to Wikia wikis? --Dreams2go 12:45, 25 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, Wikia is doing several things to increase our viability on Google and other search engines. We are talking to an expert in search optimisation, making changes to the html and layout of the site, joining new initiatives with Google and anything else we can think of!  It's vital to us as well as you that the wikis get good exposure on Google and plenty of relevant hits, so this is a high priority. -- sannse (talk) 12:48, 26 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I'll second the yes from Sannse. On top of what Sannse included on what we're doing, we're also submitting links to prominent directories such as DMOZ and About.com.  It will take time, but with high quality content, the gradual linking of other sites to our Wikia, and extensive linkage from all the search engines and directories, Wikia will eventually become more visible on Google. User:Terry Foote 19:37, 26 May 2006 (UTC)