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You know, there really isn't one absolute way or set of concrete rules on how to name your file names...But we should at least try.

You may be asking why this is so important? Why should I care so much about my file naming practices, and the truth is, it isn't, and you don't. People have gone on with their lives by naming pages whatever comes to their mind that second and their pages work perfectly fine. So why am I preaching about this? For one, I think that it is important for this to be standardized throughout the internet, and two, it is important for your own sake.

Say you have a page named This Is A Test with the file name being made as 'thisisatest.htm'. However, you have another page named Hello World with the file name as 'Hello world.html'. Now, if you wanted to run a script that dealt with file names, it would be extremely hard to program that. you would have to take in account file names with no spaces, ones with, and what about the others? 'this_is_a_test.htm', 'hello_world.htm' and do you want me to get started with pictures with roll overs or thumbnails? 'pic1.jpg' 'thumb_pic1.jpg'. It starts to get overwhelming and confusing at times and keeping it all straight gets difficult. However, there are ways of keeping things straight.

So, let me give you some quick tips that will make life much easier.

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Never:
- use capitalization
- use spaces
- use special characters [*^%*#@]
- use '.jpeg'

Always:
- use underscores [_] to separate words.
- use the same file extensions for all similar file types. [use .htm or use .html ]
- use the characters a-z and 0-9
- use '.jpg'

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When it comes to pictures with accompanying rollover or thumbnail versions, use a system to your liking and stick with it. Say, your pictures for the home page link in your navigation is 'home.jpg'. Now, your rollover should be something like 'roll_home.jpg' or 'hover_home.jpg'. Just remember, that you need to keep this up for the rest of them.

// these days, many people are using one picture for their rollover purposes and don't need two, so this rules is slowly being faded out, but it should hold for thumbnails 'my_face.jpg' & 'thumb_my_face.jpg'

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Remember, these names will have to denote the content of that page and should be descriptive. However, dint make huge files names trying to achieve this [ my_pictorial_overview_of_my_la st_vacation.htm ] this would deserve a slap in the face. Instead just name is [ vacation_album.htm ] or [ 'vacation_location'_ album.htm ]

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So, those are my thoughts which are shared by many other web designers out there and hope with these rules, you will use them and make things just a little easier.

Learn more about this author, Timothy Purdy.
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