File Naming Conventions

A few of us might be old enough to remember the "good old" days of DOS and the limitation it imposed on file names: maximum 8 character names, maximum 3 character extensions, and no spaces allowed.

Today, most file systems support spaces in file names and both name and extension parts can be any length. You should be aware, however, that not all servers on the Internet properly support spaces in file names and some characters will cause strange things to happen on some servers.

A good rule of thumb for file naming, when the files will be used on the Internet is:

a) do not put spaces in your file names.
b) use only letters, numbers, the underscore (_) and the dash (-).
c) use only lower case letters in both name and extension.

These are not requirements but doing so will go a long way to prevent problems with file names.