One small thing
that can be a big thing is
naming your pages and files. This means two things
- Saving and naming
your web page file as an html file
- Titling your
web page.
Following the advise
in this section prepares you to organize your site and arrange content
and navigation via planning tools such as storyboarding, site map
layouts and other tools we will learn about later in the course.
It is part of the
organization and
navigational
planning for your site. In this particular case we are assuring you
can find, move or re-link, and organize your own site as it grows
into
a site of many, many pages.
Organization/Site Map Planning/Storyboarding
Saving And Naming
Your Web Page File as an Html File - When you save the page,
the browser knows it's a web page and can display it because the
code was
saved as an HTML file with the .htm or .html extension. The home or
splash page (the page you want to use as your front door) should be
named yourdomainname/index.html or yourdomainname/default.html. Those
are the names that Firefox and Internet Explorer look for if someone
knows your domain name but doesn't specify a file there. The most important
thing about the file name is that you call it something that will help
you in organizing your folders and files for your Web site. (see below)
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| File
Name Conventions |
Use
lowercase letter
You can use capital letters, but it is usually cleaner and aids
organization to use lower case. In a some cases, software, servers,
or operating systems may make distinctions between upper and lowercase
and you may make mistakes or find it difficult to remember a file
name if you mix them. Use all lower case. |
Use
only letters and numbers and no funny stuff (characters)
Don't use bullets, slashes, punctuation marks, that is /, \, (),
; : ",
etc. They may confuse the operating system or be confused as protocol
indicators. Never use a space. |
Okay
to Use...
the tilde (~), underscore (_), hyphen (-) or period (.). These
are typical file name conventions. A spacebar space may be okay
but I suggest you avoid it. Even if it works, it isn't the norm
we have come to expect and it therefore confuses people. |
All
web pages must end with the extension .htm
or .html.
This tells the browser to read the code and display it according
to the code tags as a Web page. PC's use .htm and Macs use .html
although either seems to work out okay. |
Note
the extension
on the end of graphics files
It is essential to help you know what kind of file it is later.
The extension will tell you something about the format, the files
use, the software it was created in or even a hint of the file
size and whether you have optimized in for the Web. |
Keep
it short
It will help you remember the name, make less errors in typing it
and recognizing it. |
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Titling Your
Web Page
- The page title has nothing to
do with the file name, except you may want to pick a key part of the
page title for you file name to help you identify it when you are looking
at your directory of site files.
First,
the page title can have capitals, be a phrase, use spaces and odd characters,
numbers and follow other normal writing conventions.
Second,
the name is used in three (3) very important ways:
- It will appear
in the "title bar" of the browser window when it is being
viewed.
- It will be used
as the title of your bookmark. If you don't title it, it will take
some default name, perhaps your file name. The user may not have a
clue what they bookmarked when they go to their bookmarks files later
and see something they don't recognize.
- Many search engines
look at your page title, often first, and use it to decide where and
how to index it and add it to their database. It effects how others
will find your pages and get to your site.
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Site Organization
- Carefully plan your site from the beginning for file organization.
It will be essential in updating and changing your files and pages later.
It will be amazing just how confusing it gets as the site grows and
time passes.
Folders
- A smaller site, under 50 files including graphics, may fit nicely
in one folder. If it is getting any larger, you may want your graphics
in a separate folder, perhaps even separate folders for main sections
of your site or categories of products.
| If
you add a completely new site section later, it is easy
to add
new folders. However, you can't make a new folder or section
out of existing files and folders. All the links will be
broken.
If you use site management software to create and organize
your site, then you can do this and the software will allow
rearranging
of files and content and will reestablish links automatically.
Some authoring tools do this such as Dreamweaver. |
Organizing
by names
- To help you find things, you may use prefixes to:
- get like files
to group together in a directory or folder (session1.html)
- to help identify
like files ("old" or "new" or "G' for graphic or "cart1,2,etc" for
a progression of cartoons an so on)
- to indicate
similar functions (navbar.jpg)
- to indicate
content or destination to a particular page (bgred.gif, work1menu.jpg)
- you may have
more ideas?
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