About three years ago, I started using longer names for my webpages. It makes it easier for me to maintain and upgrade these pages. So instead of a short name like bimodality.asp, that used a single word, or a name that used an abbreviation like mle.asp, I used two or more words strung together, such as AmbiguousDefinition.asp or AccountForDropouts.asp. At it’s most extreme, I strung five words together to get AdjustingForAgeAndSex.asp. When you combine this, though, with a fairly long base address (www.childrensmercy.org), you can get a name too long to be easily inserted in email. The address
http://www.childrens-mercy.org/stats/weblog2007/ContinuingEducationQuestions.asp
for example, is 80 characters long. If an email message truncates each line at the end of 76 characters, then this address would not work properly. I’ve made a vow to shorten these names a bit. I’ve also stored new weblog entries in the 07 folder rather than the weblog2007 folder. That alone saves eight characters. Dropping the redundant http:// at the front saves another seven characters. I’d also like to investigate a shorter domain name.
In the meantime, I will try to keep the file name itself to about 15 characters if possible. For example, this file (LongPageNames.asp) is 13 characters long.
You can find an earlier version of this page on my old website.