IMSLP Forums

As has been mentioned recently and also on previous occasions, the IMSLP is not as well known as it should be. Part of the problem is that it ranks poorly for the relevant keywords in the search engines. This problem in turn is partly due to the fact that those keywords are simply not to be found on the IMSLP pages.

I'd suggest that we try modifying the page title (the one that shows up at the top of the browser window) to contain the most important keywords. Currently, the common part reads just "- IMSLP", so for example the title of the Main Page is "Main Page - IMSLP". This certainly is not something one would search for in Google, unless (s)he knew the site already (and happened to actually remember the name.....)

I think the title should contain at least some of the following keywords:

• sheet music
• (music) score(s)
• free
• classical (music) ?
• public domain ?
• download(s) ?

On the other hand it should not be exceedingly long and make sense to human readers. Suggestions?

I tried on a new main page draft, but the <title> tag doesn't work. I don't know how we could do this.

We could try magic. Or edit the relevant MediaWiki message. Whichever works best.

We need to decide what to write first though.

How about Welcome to IMSLP - the free public domain sheet music library?

perlnerd666 wrote:How about Welcome to IMSLP - the free public domain sheet music library?

Sounds good, though having "Welcome" on every single page might be a bit overkill. Also I'm wondering if we should keep IMSLP or if it is better to use Petrucci Music Library. In the latter case we would have "library" twice though, so we might have to change it a little...

Yeah, the "welcome" can go. IMSLP is the more well-known name.

Ha! http://imslp.org/index.php?title=MediaW ... ction=edit

Should I go ahead and change it?

perlnerd666 wrote:IMSLP is the more well-known name.

Well, if we never use the new name, if will never be known. Maybe we should use both for the moment.

perlnerd666 wrote:Should I go ahead and change it?

Since it affects the entire site, maybe it would be fair to wait a little to give others a chance to comment.

changed.

How about something like

IMSLP Petrucci Music Score Library - Free Public Domain Sheet Music

It would contain both "music score" and "sheet music". It's a bit cheated though, as "Score" is not part of the actual name.....

Changed.

Feldmahler didn't like my cheating..... any other ideas to get the word "score" into the title, or should we do without it?

We can spell out IMSLP...

perlnerd666 wrote:We can spell out IMSLP...

Not sure, it would get a bit longish... not sure where the limit is, but very long titles might be treated like spam by the search engines, and we don't want to risk that. Maybe it's better to leave it as it is and see how it works out.