TikiNames_gmuslera

Already wrote some article about conflicting names of wiki pages, specially when non-editor users are enabled to create them. But if only wiki have problems with names, we are looking only a very small part of the picture.

What about names for other objects? Well, for a lot of categories there is no problem yet, because they are referred as its identifier, an unique numeric value. But this is not very easy to remember. A maybe better way could be reference the objects by its name, i.e. instead of tiki-view_blog.php?blogId=2 use something like tiki-view_blog.php?blogname=tikiwiki.org+conf.

But how far we can go in that direction? Maybe even can be named individual objects within a category, like tiki-browse_image.php?galleryName=Tikiwiki+pictures&imageName=Tikiwiki+amulet, or even have a naming interface for objects, like giving a special name to some blog or forum post. This names could make things more easier to remember, and for sites with a lot of interrelated objects (i.e. if the Tiki documentation in wiki format have a lot of graphics in the image galleries). But things could go a step further. Remembering names, specially exactly how they were written, is easier than numbers, but mistakes could be done (was awwaid musing or awwaiid musing the name of the blog? 😊. Well... for this I propose to use er... "lucky names" (remember the "you feel lucky" of google?) a probably partial name that matches when you look for a name like (in mysql sense) the one passed as parameter, and, of course, is the first result the one that gets linked.

Again, before implement that, will be useful? For most things, the more practical way of adding a cross reference could be opening a second window, browsing to the wanted resource, and coping the link to the editing window, without worrying about how resources are really referred, or even to have a icon on top, like the smiles, that open some way of browsing the existing objects and adding to the end of the edit box the right reference.

In any case, looks like a nice idea 😊