Preliminary Matters

Although you may not think twice about the filenames you use for your intellixmedia Flash Web Design web page, there are certain considerations about naming your files that you may want to take into account when creating a new page. These are no more than broad guidelines; there is no "web authority" as such that forces webmasters to name their files in a certain way. However, from experience, I have found that certain types of filenames work better than others. This article provides some tips on the naming of files for your website that may help you avoid problems with the operation of your site in the future.

This article does not actually tell you how to create a web page. It deals only with naming conventions for the files on your website. If you want a tutorial on making a website, please read the The Beginner's A-Z Guide to Starting/Creating Your Own Website instead.

This article is also not about creating good titles for your web pages. That's an entirely different topic altogether.

Before you write to me to tell me that there are pages on howtohaven.com, thesitewizard.com and thefreecountry.com that violate one or more of these rules, let me say that when I wrote earlier that I've learned "from experience" that some filenames are better than others, I wasn't kidding. To put it another way, when I mentioned some of the undesirable consequences of lousy names, those consequences aren't hypothetical scenarios I conjured up in my head.

Over time, I have changed some of those bad filenames when I redesigned my sites (albeit with their own disastrous consequences), but I'm aware I still have many pages with problematic and silly filenames. They will probably stay as they are, since they have garnered a number of links to them over time, and I'm tired of creating cures that are worse than the disease.

On the bright side, of course, if I didn't make quite so many mistakes over the years, I wouldn't have been able to write this and help other webmasters. Since you have the benefit of my hindsight, you can of course avoid the problem altogether.

and what is your agenda?