Web Publishing Tip: Permalink Your Titles

September 08, 2005 | 17 Comments

I’m not sure why people don’t do this. Maybe it’s got something to do with technological limitations with sIFR and/or some blogging software. Anyway, something that’s been bugging me quite a bit lately is when people don’t permalink their titles.

It ranks right up there with not having any about information or showing a date when something was published. Oh, and not having a permalink at all.

It’s not a huge usability issue, but for people (like me) who tend to come into commonly visited sites via the homepage it creates needless searching and scanning of the page. I’m used to simply clicking on a title that sounds interesting (and hopefully has meaning) and then scanning the article. This goes for articles and posts that are fully displayed on the homepage as well. If it’s a good article, chances are I’ll add it to my del.icio.us links, in which case I need the permalink.

Filed under: Web General
Keyword Tags: Web+publishing Web+development blogging titles permalink

Comments

1. Jeff Croft said:

It’s not a sIFR issue. I use sIFR, and my titles are permalinked. :)

Posted on September 8, 2005 11:56 AM | #

2. Joel Syverud said:

Maybe there are some answers in these discussions:

http://www.fiftyfoureleven.com/sandbox/weblog/2004/may/quick-poll-headings/
http://annevankesteren.nl/2004/05/header-link

Posted on September 8, 2005 01:05 PM | #

3. Jonathan Snook said:

For small snippets on the home page, I can agree with you, but if there’s a whole post on the home page, then I find it a little annoying to click through and see the same article in full length again. I prefer to see the text “Permalink” or “Permanent Link” near the title.

Posted on September 8, 2005 01:18 PM | #

4. Keith said:

Jonathan – Why don’t people do both? I guess what you’re saying would be fine. It’s the people who put the permalink at the bottom of the entry (which seems the common way to go) that really get me. As well, I’m not sure why you’d need (on most sites) a full entry on the homepage…but that one kind of depends on a few things.

I mean, I don’t mind that too much, but I still feel the title should be linked. I mean, you don’t have to click it, but it makes it nice for people who don’t want to scroll down to see if the whole article is displayed on the front page.

One of the real issues is making the permalink easy to locate, which it’s often not. What you do on your site, for example, is fine beacuse I can see the link to the permalink right there. I still don’t see why you wouldn’t link the titles, but at least I can hit the link easily.

I like to link to things, but people sometimes make it much harder than it needs to be.

Posted on September 8, 2005 02:14 PM | #

5. Faruk Ateş said:

This is also a good example of where Google knows what it’s doing.

The URI’s that produce the best results[1] are those who have a year, month and permanent link that is a descriptive version of either the full title, or at least enough of the title for it to be clear.

www.mysite.com/log/archive/2005/09/08/some-title-i-did

That would be an optimal URI, as far as I’m concerned. No extension (“.php” or even “.html” adds nothing of value to the actual document in question), no ID or hash or other such non-descriptive information, no underscores (Google no likey), no trailing slash at the end (the living document, i.e. the entry itself, doesn’t have any contents “within” it like with a directory, now does it?).. all in all, good URI design.

And yes, I know I know, I’ll be fixing my own Blog’s home page so that there’s no full entry there right away, obstructing the most pleasant browsing behaviour, etc. etc…

[1] I’m conducting a test, along with Mike Davidson, to see how much of an actual impact this really has in Google

Posted on September 8, 2005 02:42 PM | #

6. andr3 said:

Permalinks are not only necessary to click on them. How many times have you wanted to share an article with someone and just right-clicked on the permalink to paste it into someone’s IM window, email, forums, etc.?

It’s good practice to keep coherence, that’s why i still include the permalink in the titles of full posts. If not for clickin’, for copy/pastin’. ;)

On my website i don’t keep a policy of “short previews” of the post on the homepage.. just when the post is too long, i cut it.. it’s no fun clicking on a “read the rest of the post” link and then be presented with just another paragraph, while you could have read the whole post on the spot.

Posted on September 8, 2005 04:21 PM | #

7. Keith said:

Joel (#2) – I don’t agree with Anne in all instances. I would agree with him on the permalink page itself, but on a homepage, or index page, I think the header absolutely should be a link – which is what I’m talking about. I guess it depends on the context. Title on a home or index page: link good. Title on the page itself: not so good.

Posted on September 8, 2005 08:09 PM | #

8. Robert Wetzlmayr said:

Keith,

while reading this post I was looking for a method of grabbing the permalink of the post itself. Apparently, this post’s URL is only available in the browser’s address bar.

Wouldn’t it make sense to provide a permalink even on a single post’s page? If you wouldn’t use the title (which could lead to misinterpretations) why not add a ‘#’ similar to the ones appended to all comments?

I consider this useful as a starting point for all context menu facilities which are not available off the address bar.

Posted on September 8, 2005 09:18 PM | #

9. Faruk Ates said:

Keith: agreed on you on the Anne thing. Almost anyone I know who reads blogs or newssites a lot expects the header to be clickable to the full article. It’s almost the same kind of expected behaviour like underlines are for links.

Posted on September 9, 2005 12:17 AM | #

10. Faruk Ates said:

“I agree WITH…” – geeze, it’s too early for me. I should not be posting comments yet…

Posted on September 9, 2005 12:17 AM | #

11. Ozh said:

I’ll add another obvious tip : make a link to site root from header logo. I just hate when I have to go in browser’s bar and manually trim URL to site root because I couldn’t find a link on an article page.

Posted on September 9, 2005 01:05 AM | #

12. Jens Meiert said:

These (no obvious article links, missing homepage links) are substantial usability issues and must be fixed. On an index page, headlines are necessary, and if they only introduce an article, it definitely makes sense to link the headlines. Will be proved by user tests.

Posted on September 9, 2005 02:20 AM | #

13. Mike D. said:

I can’t believe nobody has suggested I do that with my sIFR titles in the 15 or so month’s my blog has been live. Simple oversight on my part.

Fixed!

Posted on September 9, 2005 01:05 PM | #

14. Tom Oakes said:

I’ve “rolled my own” publishing system, which is run by a SQL Server database and (gasp) ASP pages. My permalinks look like http://www.oakcd.com/blog/item.asp?id=4200, which I realize is not a great linkage format, in terms of metadata. 4200 tells you nothing about the date or content of the post.

This post has caused me to rethink this, and redesign to actually have it “publish” files for each entry, rather than pulling dynamically from the db (which I assume is what WordPress, Movable Type, etc are doing).

Thanks!

Posted on September 9, 2005 02:16 PM | #

15. Keith said:

Robert (#8) – Hmm, I think that might be a good idea. The reason I’ve never done that is it’s generally a usability no-no to link a page to itself (with the exception of navigation, and even then some people think it’s bad) but I can see the value in what you’re talking about. I’ll think on it.

Posted on September 10, 2005 07:37 PM | #

16. Calrion said:

I’ll see your “link article titles” and raise you a “add ‘previous’ and ‘next’ links to individual article pages”.

Seriously, it really annoys me when I finish reading an article/post and can’t easily progress to the next one. I have to go back to the homepage, then to the archives, find the article I was reading… ugh!

Interestingly enough, only three of my top-ten web design blogs have this feature. Go Figure.

Posted on September 11, 2005 08:20 PM | #