[pmwiki-users]SEO: Avoiding Headings in the SideBar

[H. Fox]

On 8/14/05, Patrick R. Michaud <pmichaud at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 14, 2005 at 07:59:56AM -0400, Crisses wrote:
> >
> > Ouch.  Those are one of the primary criteria for indexing pages along
> > with the "Title" of the page (which makes using (:title Name of the
> > Page:) much more important for wikis that want good Google.).
> 
> PmWiki already puts page's name into a <title> tag, so this is
> already in place.  (:title ...:) just provides a way of changing
> its value.

For the purpose of search engine optimization the default behavior of
using the page's name as WikiWord probably isn't optimal.  I suspect
that serves to increase the relevance of headings.

> > The proper search-engine-friendly format is to use unordered lists.
> > And that would resolve an issue I have with one of my template's
> > upcoming changes for site nav anyway.
> 
> Yeah, for a variety of reasons I'm thinking unordered lists
> may be the way to go here.

FWIW I'm updating the Light Skin in anticipation of the change to H5
that's already on pmwiki.org.  I also added a "divider" class for the
sidebar, so now all of these have the same appearance:

    ! [[Main/WikiSandbox]]

    !!!!! [[Main/WikiSandbox]]

    !!!!!! [[Main/WikiSandbox]]

    (:div class='divider':)
    [[Main/WikiSandbox]]
    (:divend:)

I also added an option to use $Titlespaced as a hidden H1 heading. 
Authors will be encouraged to start with h2 headings in their wiki
pages (which is normal anyway).  The following line gets inserted into
the <!--PageTitleFmt--> area.

   <div style='display:none;'><h1>\$Titlespaced</h1></div>

It can be disabled in the skin.php file.

Hagan