Data Model: Review max length limits in database schema

[ErisDS]

Some of the max length limits in the database schema need extending.

With regard to meta_title and meta_description, see: #4126 (comment)

While we're at it, it's worth reviewing all of the max length limits now that we have more information about how people use their blogs.

For all of the "text" fields that don't have a clear answer to how long they should be, we need a plan for:

• what field types should we use and why
• what length should the field be in the database (hard limit)
• to what length should the field be validated (taking utf8mb4) into account (soft limit)

We don't get to change these things later, only thing we can easily do is increase a soft (validated) limit
So it needs to be right, and future proof

In order to implement the changes, we will need #601 - the ability to change the max length on a column.

We're going to make these changes as part of the alpha

[javorszky]

Max length for slugs is arbitrary. I don't think there shuold be a limit. We've run into the slugs not being long enough here: https://ghost.org/forum/using-ghost/16161-how-to-change-the-slug-to-include-only-year-and-month

I propose to extend that to 512 or even 1024 char lengths. Currently it's 150.

[halfdan]

@javorszky At the same time the title length should be reconsidered. It currently has a limit of 150 characters as well.

title: {type: 'string', maxlength: 150, nullable: false},
slug: {type: 'string', maxlength: 150, nullable: false, unique: true},

[JohnONolan]

Slugs are one thing which can have a pretty restrictive limit without negative consequence. We should simply trim them automatically for both readability and usability. It's also an SEO enhancement (source).

I agree title length should be less restrictive

[javorszky]

Google says (source, march 7, 2014, source of source) that you should keep urls shorter than 2,000 chars, but there's no theoretical limit.

Would definitely help with 301 redirects in that you only need to swap the domains and not cater for regex trimming urls.

[JohnONolan]

• Older browsers throw errors on URLs longer than 255 chars
• Drupal limits to 255
• WordPress limits to 200
• Medium limits to 135
• Tumblr limits to 100

[javorszky]

Let's move the limit to 255 then? :)

[ErisDS]

Closing this as it's effectively covered by #7432 and we don't need 2 issues open :)