Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

File Naming Conventions

For your files to traverse the network successfully, you must name them in accordance with established file naming conventions :

• Avoid character spaces in filenames. Although this is perfectly acceptable for local files on a Macintosh or Windows machine, character spaces are not recognized by other systems. It is common to use an underscore or hyphen character to visually separate words within filenames, such as andre_bio.html or andre-bio.html. Hyphens are sometimes preferred because they tend to better enable search engines to index the individual words in a filename.

• Avoid special characters such as ?, %, #, /, and : in filenames. It is best to limit filenames to letters, numbers, underscores (in place of character spaces), hyphens, and periods.

• Use proper suffixes. HTML documents should use the suffix .html (.htm also works on most servers ). GIF graphic files take the suffix .gif, and JPEGs should be named .jpg or .jpeg. If your files do not have the correct suffix, the server might not send the proper HTTP Content-Type header, and thus the browser may not recognize the files as web-based files. Suffixes for a large number of common file types are listed later in this chapter.

• Consistently using all lowercase letters in filenames, while certainly not necessary, may make them easier to remember. In addition, filenames are case-sensitive on some servers, so keeping them all lowercase avoids potential hassles.

• Keep filenames as short as possible. They add to the size of the file (and they can be a nuisance to remember).