Advice on naming files and directories of my site (Mixing lower and u) 1

[Minarai]

Simple question, (?)

I'm doing the written layout of a website, and I'd like input on naming directories and pages.

I'm running IIS 5.0 which I belive rectifies url bar lower/caps input problems on the server side, but I've heard that the policy now is to use all lower case folder and directory names.

First, could somebody tell me the *technical* logic behind this trend?

Also, I have several page names that are rather long and want to name them, for example, WebInvoiceSys.asp, or such using the caps for better user recogniton.

Any advice, hints, warnings before I set these names in binary ;-)?

 

[WhiteTiger]

I dont think there is a problem if your using IIS 5.0...it does resolve upper/lowercase names...

and for the logic behind it...Ummm...I'm THINKING most things were case sensative at once...so once people tried going to say, Abrahms.com and it was really abrahms.com it got messed up, so they started saying, EVERYTHING LOWERCASE, and everyone did it to avoid the problems...later on the caveman invented the wheel and said, me make lower and upper equal!

(Slight humor attempted to be thrown in there) Regards,
Anthny
----------------------------------------
"You say [red]insanity[/red] like it's a BAD THING!"

 

[ayjaycee]

AIUI, If you're developing on Windows & running on IIS, then no problem - M/S s/w ignores case. So, the names "fred.htm", "Fred.htm", "FRED.HTM" etc, will all refer to the same file, which is stored as "FRED.HTM" on your PC (even though it might look like "Fred.htm", or whatever, on a directory listing).

If you're using a unix/linux O/S at any point, then case matters. The files "fred.htm", "Fred.htm", "FRED.HTM" etc, are all different files.

Whether you think this is "A GOOD THING" (TM) or not is up to you ;-)

e.g. If you develop on Win98 with mixed case, it'll work fine while you're testing. But if you then upload to a unix server, your code might stop working. A html doc which refers to "fred.htm" will pick up the file "Fred.htm" on your PC, but the server will be looking for "fred.htm" & will not pick up "Fred.htm".

So, the bottom line is, it's best to use lower case, as this will remove the chances of problems down the line if you ever move fron a M/S server to a *nix one.

HTH TandA

http://www.tanda.f2s.com

 

[WhiteTiger]

I say stick with IIS...especially in Win2k...I love the win2k servers and they are a great thing to work with...a lot less confusing than the more dos-like unix machines. Regards,
Anthny
----------------------------------------
"You say [red]insanity[/red] like it's a BAD THING!"

 

[tsdragon]

I do most of my work on *nix systems, so I'm used to the uc/lc differences. I do use mixed case to make long name easier to read. It doesn't seem to hurt things when I test under win98. I guess if you're silly enough to have 3 different files on a unix system named fred, Fred, and FRED you deserve what you get. The one thing I would advise is that any urls that a user might need to enter should be all lowercase, since user's aren't used to having to enter uppercase characters in a url. Other that that, I'd say go ahead and use the mixed case file and directory names if it makes them easier to read.
Tracy Dryden
tracy@bydisn.com

http://www.bydisn.com

Meddle not in the affairs of dragons,
For you are crunchy, and good with mustard.

 

[Minarai]

whitetiger,aj,dragon> Thanks for the input!

(jumping up and down waving my hand wildly)
Oooh! Oooh! Mr. Kotter, Mr. Kotte--r! (well, actually whitetiger)

IIS? Wk2 server?
Maybe you can point me in the right direction on this...

I'm planning on using SSIs <!--#include file (.htm,.inc etc.) > on every page of my site.
Rather that having some files named .shtml and some .asp (for our pages with interfaces built in) my partner thought we ought to just have every page be an .asp page from the start.

I know that if I add it to a directory, I can use .htm rather than .shtml...

First, I don't know how to do this...

Second, what are the advantages of allowing parsed htm files over naming all my files .asp

Is there a relevant disadvantage to having an entire site of .asp pages?

Input please!
I'm rather undecided and the projct must go on.