Browser tab looks odd

  • Unknown's avatar
    joanatkinson · Member ·

    My domain forwards from GoDaddy (gadzooksnv.com) to WordPress, but in the process, additional characters are added to the information displayed on the browser tab. It reads ‘**gadZooks! A Creative Place**’ with the addition of the two asterisks on each end. Any thoughts as to why?

    WP.com: Yes
    Correct account: Yes

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    The browser tab displays whatever is set as your site title. And that’s all I see if I visit your site at http://gadzooksnv.wordpress.com/:

    https://d.pr/i/r4oQkh

    But when you go to http://gadzooksnv.com/, you’re not visiting your WordPress.com site. You’re visiting a completely different site, hosted on GoDaddy’s servers, which just has your WordPress.com site embedded in an iframe. So the browser tab will show whatever is set as the title for that site on GoDaddy’s servers, that we don’t have any control over.

    What you’re doing here is something called domain masking. It’s a way to make it seem as if your site is loading at a custom domain, but we don’t support domain masking on WordPress.com, and it causes a number of problems. The issue with the browser tab displaying the wrong title and not showing your favicon is one.

    Using this method to have your site load at the domain also means we can’t issue a SSL certificate, so your site won’t load over https, which means it automatically gets penalised by search engines as well. It also breaks your site’s responsiveness, i.e. it prevents us from detecting if someone is viewing your site on a mobile device, so we can only show the desktop version of your site regardless of a visitor’s screen size. It also messes with stats and some widgets.

    The only way to prevent all these issues is to properly connect the domain to your site using our domain connection upgrade instead. That upgrade is included in our Pro plan, though we’ll also be launching a less expensive option soon that will let you do this.

    https://wordpress.com/en/support/domains/connect-existing-domain/

    Let me know if you have any questions about this.

  • Unknown's avatar
    joanatkinson · Member ·

    Thanks for your informative response. The two used to play well together, but I guess things change.

    I’ll look into the plans you reference.

    Best,

    J

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