How do you name your files?

About Files: This page has information that may be helpful as you deal with files. This does not cover everything. The intent is to address some frequently asked questions about files.

Most Important: Name your files so you will know what they are. You may consider two oppositional preferences.

Spaces in file names are BAD on the Internet. Use "filenames.htm", "filenames.html", "file_names.html" or "file_names.htm". Do not use two words separated by the space as in "File Names". If you must have words separated, use the underscore ( _ ) to separate and fill what would be the space.

Upper case letters in file names are BAD on the Internet. If the Operating System of the server is case sensitive (such as UNIX and LINUX) then using upper case can make URLs not work. In the examples below, the upper case letter would cause the case sensitive server to provide the browser with the People file, rather than the people file. And, if the server OS is not case sensitive, then only one file, named either People or people, can exist.

www.this.com/People/
www.this.com/people

Confused? To avoid confusion, NEVER USE UPPER CASE LETTERS.

Symbols and Most Punctuation Marks in file names are BAD. Do not use things like *?|\/@#$%^&*()! and such as part of the file name. Use only letters or numbers in the file name. Exceptions to this rule are the underscore( _ ) and the period (.). Use the underscore instead of spaces. Use the period (dot) to separate the file name from the file extension.

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File Extensions:

In Windows, the file names are in two parts....the part before the dot, and the part after the dot. The part before the dot is the file name, and the part after the dot, called the extension, is supposed to identify the kind of file. Your computer operating system (i.e. Windows) uses the extension to choose what program it will use to open a file. Common extensions for web page files are "htm", or "html".

The "jpg" and the "gif" extensions indicate that the file is an image. The "jpg" image is usually a photograph, and the "gif" image is usually a drawing, like a cartoon. These image files are preferred for web pages because they are smaller than other types of image files, and thus take less time to load into a browser.

Some preferences in the way Windows is set to show file names can cause file extensions to be hidden, but they're still there. And UNIX relies on them and Mac OS X uses them but doesn't require them. So our best practice is to make sure our files have extensions.

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"index.html" or "default.html"

If a browser is given a web address (url) that leads to a folder, browsers look for and display any file named either "index.html" or "default.html". (You can also use the extension .htm, as in index.htm.) We give our introductory or welcome page either of these names to tell browsers to start with the file we want readers to see first. The other contents of the folder are then hidden from view, and anything there must be identified by actual file name in the url before it can be viewed, or there must be a link on a page that tells the browser to open a specific file. Without the filename or the link, the contents of a folder that contains an index.htm or default.htm file are unviewable with a browser.

If there is no file with one of those names, the browser will display a list of the files in the folder, on a page that it creates and calls "Index of /"name of folder"". A viewer can choose any file in the folder by clicking the filename found in the list.