File and Directory Names. Good 'safe' Web Standard to use?

halojoy

A Note on File and Directory Names
One key to a successful web page is getting the file names right. Here are a few useful file naming rules for web pages:

    * All HTML document names must end in .htm or .html
    * Filenames in the unix environment are case-sensitive. It will make things easier if you use all lower-case characters.
    * Filenames may not contain any spaces, or any dots other than the one right before the .htm (or .html) extension.
    * Keep file names short, but descriptive. [/QUOTE][B][U]File and Directory Names.[/U][/B]
The above I found when searching for info.

Some questions I have:
1. No Spaces!
They are banned, alright! And of course!
Causes lots of troubles at some Hosts / Web Servers
But what characters can I allow?
Is this okay:
this-name.php
Or should I restrict to: a-z plus _ (underscore)?

ONLY Lower Case!
This is important, I think. Can cause issues, for sure.

First character. Shouldn't we in use only a-z in first char?
or is underscore acceptable in dir/file-names?
Anyway, in usernames and passwords I only want a-z, A-Z as first char.
But is maybe a bit different for filenames?

Keep names short.
So what lenght?
a.htm is alright, I think.
But should we restrict to: 8 or 16 or 32 characters?
What is Too Long? and does this include the extension,
like '.html' will add 5 characters.
I know the old windows system wanted max 8 chars + filetype extension with 3 chars.
This makes total 11 chars in a filename, for those very old operation systems.

Descriptive names.
This is also very good to do and important to me.
abc123.html ... is no good, unless it is about 'alfabet and numbers' 😃

Thanks for any valuable information and your thinking.
I just want to 'get it right'!
Make 'safe' and proper working names for my web files and web directories/folders.
With proper and not TOO LONG names.

For getting it, at least, 99.5% safe and good 😃

Regards
halojoy
🙂

Weedpacket

http://www.w3.org/TR/chips/#uri

A common mistake, responsible for many HTTP implementations problems, is to think this is equivalent to a filename within a computer system. This is wrong. URIs have, conceptually, nothing to do with a file system. One should remember that at all times when dealing with the World Wide Web.

halojoy

Weedpacket wrote:
http://www.w3.org/TR/chips/#uri

So, what names you use for your web files, Weedpacket?
You have any rule you live by?
Or you use just about anything without any regards?
..... wouldn't think so

We can make scripts, that serves URLs without a single filename or only use 'index.php'
and we can use mod rewrite to even skip index.
So yes, Filename is not same thing as URL
... but then again, normally, it surely, most of the time,
has got something to do with eachother:

When I upload my directories + files to a webserver,
normally, many of those names are making up part of URL.

No matter if I download some web php scripts, software
or I write my stuff myself.
At least this is my practical, real world, experience - time after time.
🙂

Regards
halojoy
🙂

laserlight

When I upload my directories + files to a webserver,
normally, many of those names are making up part of URL.

No matter if I download some web php scripts, software
or I write my stuff myself.
At least this is my practical, real world, experience - time after time.

I can understand if you find it real world experience as a visitor of websites (and so do I, for that matter), but if you say that you yourself confuse the issue even though you know of possible solutions, then you are perpetuating the confusion. In a way, it is like saying: "oh, I do not use stylesheets because in my experience few people use them, and I do not use them either". The former was true not too long ago, but the latter is just circular reasoning.

halojoy

So,
back on topic.

What is good and not so good when making up names for your files
more specifically those files you will use at your webspace

What 'personal standard' do you use or recommend laserlight?
How do you do it?
You use whatever names on you files .... 😃 😃

Why is nobody telling what they have found good
and what they avoid or absolutely would NOT recommend.

Most of the responses I have got so far
is in the very abstract
and avoiding the real life programming practical habbits.
Such namings that can cause considerable many bugs,
when they easily could have been avoided by learning good standard fromthe beginning.

Regards
halojoy
🙂

laserlight

avoiding the real life programming practical habbits

Filenames are created even by those who do not program, and who may never ever create their own webpages. URIs, on the other hand, are only made by those who engage in some form of web authorship.

If you have read what Weedpacket linked to, you would find a list of recommendations for URI naming.

Vaskerville

[url]http://www.my_site.com/788kjshfk/87ep8y/8279r8yhfouhwsrf8yw98y23.html.php[/url]

Nobody can track my stuff down!

dalecosp

Vaskerville wrote:
[url]http://www.my_site.com/788kjshfk/87ep8y/8279r8yhfouhwsrf8yw98y23.html.php[/url]

Nobody can track my stuff down!

Heh. whois indicates that your real name is Mrs. Helene Mavorsky of Hoboken, New Jersey, USA. 😃

halojoy, my personal standard: if it's too hard a filename to mess with from the Unix prompt, it's not appropriate. That means alphanumeric characters (starting always with an alpha, underscores instead of spaces, a rare hyphen, and any number of dots, as long as the file name makes sense). Here's an example from a small currently work-in-progress:

404.html
config.php
css/
grp.php
images/
includes/
index.html
info.html
missing.html@
nav.html
pdf.php
pdf1.php
rss.php
test.html

Note that "missing.html" is a link to 404.html, which, apparently, breaks my "starting with" statement above. Real easy to type tho, and 'Nix has no issues with it AFAIK.

Vaskerville

Underscores are better than hyphens?

Roger_Ramjet

Google recommend that you use URIs that are meaningful, descriptive and related to the page content to improve search engine indexing and page ranking.