Before you set your hands on the keyboard and mouse,plan your file naming conventions for your web site.Talk to your system administrator and find out what type of operating system your web server uses.Typically you will develop your locally on a PC or Macintosh, and then upload the files to the web server as the last step in the publishing process. If the web server runs an operating system different form your local development system, transferring your files to the server may break local URL links because of either filename or directory structure inconsistencies.

FILE NAMING

The maximum length of the filename, valid characters and punctuation, and sensitivity to uppercase and lowercase letters all very among operating syste as described.

Case Sensitivity

If you have an image file named picture gift, for example, and you reference that file as the image will display properly on a Macintosh or windows machine.On a UNILX server, however, the image will not load properly windows machine.On a UNLX machine, picture, gif and picture gif are two different files. It is best always to use lowercase letter for all filenames Remember to use

lowercase letters in filenames in your HTML.Code as well.

Character Exceptions

Character use also is incompatible between operating systems. For example the filename my stuff.htm is valid on a PC or Macintosh,but not on a UNIX machine because of the space in the filename.If you transfer a web site containing my styff.htm to a UNIX server, the links to the file will not work.

File extensions

Use the correct file extension to identify your file to browser.HTML text files must end in.html or .html. Be careful to add this extension when you are working in Notepad, which defaultsto saving .As you also must correctly specify image file formats in the file extensions.

Solving the filename Dilemma

The best way to overcome the restrictions of case sensitivity, character exceptions, and file extensions is to use the convention specified by the international standards organization for all your files.This convention specifies a maximum of eight letters followed by a period and three-Letter extensions.Allowed characters are letters, numbers,and the under- three-letter file extension if you use the 8.3 file naming convention on your development system, you will have little or no file name problems when you transfer your filed to the server, regardless of the server's operating system. By sticking with this filename format, you ensure that your files will be portable across the greatest number of operating systems. Do not forget to use lowercase characters, and omit special characters from your filenames to ensure compatibility.

URL USAGE

Although you may know that URLs are the addresses you type into your browser to access a site,you may not realize that there are two type of URLs:-complete and partial.