Hi,
I am using the Album Templates Justified and Masonry. On my website a Mouseover displays the file names of the images. As I internally often use customers name within the file names, I do not want to share this information in public.
Is there any way to turn-off this mouseover filename display?
Thank you
Nope. Further, file names can always be seen in the page source code, or in page URLs for image permalinks. We use them in a few other places throughout page building, and regardless what we do, search engines will always see your file names and factors them into SEO.
To wit, you shouldn’t be putting private or sensitive information in your file names. And that’s not Backlight-specific advice; it’s just how the Internet works.
I recommend not using client names in your file naming; instead, use them in folder names in your library, or add them to image metadata.
My personal file name convention is this:
mc-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS-keyword-keyword-keyword
For example:
mc-20210430-123000-San-Francisco-California
The “mc” is my initials. I then use the date and time for ensure unique file names throughout my entire catalog. If I’m shooting rapid burst – multiple shots per second – then I might also add a sequence number following the time, again to ensure unique file names.
You can always protect those albums with either passcode in a regular album) or by using the Client Response add-on and make them private (requiring both email and password). Then the albums will only be viewable by those you’ve granted access to.
If you mean the little box that pops up next to the cursor when hovering over a thumbnail, like this:
The the solution is to add a title to the images’ Title metadata field.
If there is no information in that field, the image filename is used.
If you’re using Lightroom Publisher to publish your albums, simply make the additions to the Title field in all of your images and republish the album. (you can save time by editing the Publisher settings in Lightroom and clicking on the “Push metadata without updating existing photos” box.
If using Backlight Publisher, I believe you will need to make the changes to the Title field and export the images and then replace the existing images.
But, as Matt pointed out, anybody can view a page’s source code and see the file names. And the urls to the images contain file names. So anyone clicking on those images will see the file names…
Rod, yeah, thank you, that helped!
I suspected this solution already seeing Matt’s website, he is using titles only too.
I have a similar name convention as Matt on my 100k+ images. But sometimes I am using names for faster distinction. Simply too late to change it now.
Clear file names in source code and SEO is Ok for me, only few go for it. But this little po-up box is very noticeable right over the image. On top of that, the entire path is displayed again at the left bottom corner of the page anyway.
Great to have fast answers, thank you both.
Yeah, when I did some Googling about, the only solution to the url showing in that lower left status bar was using javascript… You can try that. You’ll need to use phplugins. Put any code in the scripts hook.
Still doesn’t solve the issues with page source code and the actual image url when viewing.
Are you making these albums protected or private?
No, they are all public, marketing my work.
I will try your recommendation with phplugins tomorrow.
Thank you Rod!
Additionally, Google uses the file name, among other information, when performing a search. I would only use the name of persons as part of a filename in private albums.
That will only hide the browser status bar (if it works), but won’t hide the file name in the address bar when viewing an image, and it can’t hide file names in the page source code.
If you’re going to use real names in your file names, those names are going to be seen.