Managing Files

Filenames are important because they are used when linking to other documents (such as web pages, images, Word documents and pdfs).

To ensure files can be correctly identified, care should be taken to avoid confusion in naming files. The use of different case (lower/upper), special characters and spaces can all cause confusion when linking files or attempting to open them in a browser. To avoid this, some guidelines have been set for naming files that make up the University of Adelaide websites.

Guidelines

Filenames for all files within University websites, whether they are web pages, documents, pdfs or images, should be made up of only:

• lowercase letters
• numbers
• hyphens (dashes).

This means that uppercase letters, spaces, symbols and punctuation or other special characters should not be used in filenames on University websites. Using hyphens to separate keywords in your URLs can help maximise the searchability of your pages.

Case Sensitivity

The University web servers use the Unix operating system which uses case-specific filenaming. Even when a link appears to be correct on the local computer, if the file is named using uppercase letters, the links may not work correctly on the server.

Spaces and Special Characters

Spaces should be avoided in filenames as a space is not a valid character in a URL. Most browsers will convert spaces in a linked URL to the standard replacement characters %20 and will be able to locate the page, however this is not guaranteed. For example, the file "university of adelaide.html" will appear as "university%20of%20adelaide.html".

Even when a browser is able to deal with spaces by using the %20, plug-ins that open .pdfs or .doc files may not perform the reverse conversion and a linked file may fail to open.

Default Filename

Throughout the University of Adelaide website, the default filename for each folder is index.html. This means that when a URL specifying a folder name rather than a file is entered in a browser for a University of Adelaide site, the server searches for, and displays, a webpage called index.html located in that folder. If the index.html isn't found, a list of the files is displayed instead. To avoid this happening, always make sure that every folder in the site contains an index.html file. Therefore it is recommended that the main file in each folder be called index.html. For example, http://www.adelaide.edu.au/current/ will open the index.html file saved in the current folder automatically.

It is particularly important that an index.html page be located in the home folder of each site, as users expect to be able to go to a site by entering a URL ending in a folder name rather than having to specify the file at the end. If the file is not available and they are shown a file listing when attempting to access the site, it appears unprofessional and they are likely to give up on viewing the site.

Reusable Filenames

Where possible, name documents so that links to the file will not need to be changed when the document is updated or replaced in the future.

Avoid using dates or version numbers in the filename so that later versions of a document can be uploaded over the original version to update the information without the need for changing links. For example, if the annual report for your area is available on your website, consider naming the document annual-report.doc or annual-report.pdf rather annual-report-2006.doc or annual-report-2006.pdf. When the following year's annual report is available it can be uploaded with the same filename and all links to the file will continue to work as before.

Extensions

Because the web server used for the University of Adelaide uses a Unix operating system, the preferred extension for web content files is .html rather than .htm. Therefore the default webpage in each folder should be index.html and all other webpages within a folder should contain the .html extension. Standard extensions should be used for other documents and filetypes. Common filetypes are:

• .doc : Word document
• .pdf : PDF (Portable Document File)
• .jpg, .jpeg, .gif, .png : image files

Clicking on the files link in the options box will display the files for the current folder. These files represent either web pages [.HTML], documents [.pdf, .doc] or images [.gif, .jpg].

Sub-folders within the currently displayed folder are also shown in the file list (e.g. the secure folder shown in the screenshot below).

Clicking once on a folder will cause the contents of that folder to be displayed. To move up a folder level, click on the Parent Directory folder icon at the top of the files list.

Note: Keep an eye on the text at the top of the screen e.g. Index of webguide/tech/tms/, as this indicates where you have navigated to e.g. in this case, the tms folder within the tech folder on the webguide website.

By using these options, it is possible to navigate through all folders of the site and to add and upload images or documents.

Folders (directories) are useful for keeping your website files organised. In most cases, you would be creating a folder as a subfolder of the /images/ or /docs/ folder to keep things tidy. This will also help the files view load quicker when you're browsing through the site files. As if there are a lot of files in a folder, it will take longer to load the file list.

To create a new folder:

• Navigate to the folder you want to create a new folder in via the 'files' link at the bottom of your webpage.
  E.g. to create a subfolder in the /sitename/images/ folder, start at the homepage for your site in webdev: https://www.webdev.adelaide.edu.au/sitename/.
• Click the 'files' link at the bottom of the page.
• Click on the /images/ folder to go into that folder.
• Click in the address bar at the top of your browser and remove everything after /images/.
• Type in the name of the new folder you want to create and press enter.
  E.g. https://www.webdev.adelaide.edu.au/sitename/images/new-foldername/.
• You'll get an error page (like when you create a new page), but at the bottom of the page you'll see the option to 'create'. Click the 'create' link.
• This will create a folder AND a page, it will also take you straight into 'edit' mode. Because you don't want to create a page, just a folder, you need to click 'cancel' and exit edit mode.
• From there, click the 'delete' link in the first box at the bottom of the page. This will ask if you're sure you want to delete "/sitename/images/new-foldername/index.HTML" (note it has index.HTML). 
• Click 'yes' to confirm.
• Now you will have an empty subfolder within your sites images folder.