File naming and spacing

[world33]

Hi Richard,

I am using Version 2.6.1
In the past file naming was substituting spaces with "-" as per your help:

WebMerge alters data used as file names to be suitable for use on a Web server. Characters such as quotes, spaces, question marks, forward slashes, and others have special significance on a server, and such characters are converted to hyphen ("-") when the page is generated.The data in this field can also specify sub-folders for generated HTML pages.

Now however it seems like it just removes the space and does not replace it with a "-". So if a field contains "New York" the generated file becomes NewYork.html instead of New-York.html. This is not good for search engine optimization purposes. Is it a bug? How Can I convert spaces into "-" like in the past versions of webmerge?

Cheers,

Fabio

[minstrel]

Actually, modern search engines understand NewYork.html just fine.

See https://www.google.com/search?q=newyork.html&ie=UTF-8

[world33]

Originally Posted by minstrel

Actually, modern search engines understand NewYork.html just fine.

See https://www.google.com/search?q=newyork.html&ie=UTF-8

Thanks for that. Beside that all my files have been named with the "-" between keywords and starting renaming hundred of files because the software changed file naming rule is a bit annoying. I would also have to redirect the old file urls to the new ones. I would like to know if it is a bug or a change not documented in the help section.

Thanks

[FourthWorld]

We're very picky about maintaining backward compatibility with each new version of WebMerge we release, because URLs are critical to web success and we wouldn't want to change those out from under you. Even if both "NewYork.html" and "New-York.html" score equally well, it's important that if you have a URL with incoming links to one form it shouldn't be changed to another.

So any change you're seeing is not by design. Whether this is a bug in the version of WebMerge you're using or elsewhere, I'm committed to seeing your page generation resume to the URL form you were using before.

Normally, WebMerge should be using "-" in place of characters which may otherwise cause problems, as you noted with the quote from the docs.

But there's also an option in Preferences to change that to "_", and I'm wondering if somehow your preferences file may have gotten changed in a way that's making WebMerge believe that the character you want to use for such concatenation is an empty string.

To check this theory, you should be able to restore the Preferences file by simply making a change to any settings in the Preferences window.

To do that, choose Edit->Preferences (Windows and Linux) or application menu->Preferences (Mac), and in the Preferences window where you see the options for Hyphenation first click the Underscore button to register that a change has been made, and then click the Hyphen button to set it to the value you want.

After you've made that change, run your settings file again and see how your page names are created.

If that doesn't resolve the issue please give me a call so we can diagnose this further: 800-288-5825.

If you're outside the US feel free to email me at ambassador@fourthworld.com.

Thanks -

[world33]

Thanks Richard,

I checked what you suggested. I noticed that the underscore option was checked in the preferences. I switched to hyphen but it did not allow me to "save". When I tried to "save as" instead and asked me to replace the old file I was able to save. However when re-opening the file again it was back to underscore preference.
That means that there is a bug in:
1) using the underscore as an option (it replaces spaces instead)
2) saving permanently the hyphen option in the preferences
I wonder how many people have generated files with no space since the bug came out. You might consider to offer a third option "remove space" to save these people a lot of work and renaming their files.

Cheers,

Fabio

[FourthWorld]

While I agree that there's a problem with your setup, given the number of customers we have if this was an issue for all users relying on hyphenated file named we would have heard about it long ago, likely during the public beta test.

I can't say for sure how your setting got awry, and I've been trying to reproduce it here, but while I work on that try this:

In the Index Pages and Detail Pages tabs there's a section for settings that govern how the generated files are named, which also includes a preview file name in the upper-right of that section.

Try changing the field name you're using for the file name, and then setting it back to the one you want, and note if the preview area changes to use the hyphenation you're looking for.

If it does, you should be able to just save your settings and you're good to go.

In the meantime, I'll continue to look for the recipe which creates this circumstance, and address it in the upcoming v2.7.

Thanks for the report.

[world33]

Thanks Richard,

Not sure why it happens. I reinstalled the software to check if it made any difference. I just know that:
1) the default hyphenation setting whenever I open any 4ww file (new or old) is set to underscore my_file.html, where according to your help it should be the hyphen my-file.html
2) when leaving this unchanged it actually generates myfile.html instead of using underscores.
3) If I change the hyphenation method to hyphen (my-file.html) just before running a project it works fine, however when closing the project and re-opening it it goes back to underscore with the same generation problem pointed out in point 2); basically it does not save the hyphen setting in the preferences. I even tried to run the program as administrator but no luck.

I am using windows 7 64 if that might be any relevant.

When do you plan to release the v2.7 approximately?

Cheers,

Fabio

[FourthWorld]

Did you try my suggestion of changing and then resetting the field used for file names? The Preferences items are stored separately, but the field name info is stored in the settings file, and my hunch/hope is that in your case you'll only need to set it once and it'll stick after you save.

If not I'll look into this more on Monday.

Have a great weekend.