Managing Files

GDES-220 spring 2016 · American University Design
Instructor: David Ramos (ramos@american.edu)

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When building websites, filenames and their locations matter. Think about what you call the file and where you put it. Follow these guidelines to avoid chaos.

Make sure that you can find important parts of your project.

Naming files

• No spaces! When saving files for the web, never use spaces. Substitute underscores_for_spaces or hyphens-for-spaces.
• In our class, only use lowercase letters. No UPPERCASE in file names. Capital letters will only make your life harder.
• Dots/periods ( filename.jpg ) are fine.
• Make sure you include an extension ( .html , .jpg , .png , .css ).
• Stay away from other punctation marks or special characters.

Good

• index.html
• emily.html
• emily-portrait-2.jpg
• style.css

Bad

• photo of emily.jpg (no spaces!)
• emily-drawing (needs an extension)
• style-copy.css (use more descriptive names)
• index2.html (there should be only one index file)

Sometimes acceptable, but not for our class

• Emily_bio.jpg (use lowercase only)

Terrible

• index2 FINAL :) {Illustré par Cybèle?}.HTML

Use a name like this and lots of otters will start crying. You wouldn’t want to make these otters unhappy, would you?