When maintaining your Web site, you will want to find a file quickly to complete your task more efficiently. So rather than spending 5 minutes or so looking for a single file that you incorrectly named, invest time in creating an easy to understand filename system that would be also be understood by other people. You may want help in the future maintaining files and if nobody else knows your cryptic filename system, they’d be at a disadvantage. Generally, a Web site’s home page is named “index.html” (which is now standard). As a side note, when naming this page in FrontPage, type the full name “index.html” into the “Save As” block instead of typing “index” or the program will save it as “index.htm.” Most servers need the full “html” extension to automatically display this page when a Web site address is entered in the URL block of a Web browser. Other files will be saved with the “.htm” extension, which is fine in most cases. All you have to do for the other files when using the “Save As” option is simply type the filename and click “Ok” to save your file.
Your filenames can’t contain any special characters. If they do, most FTP programs won’t upload the file(s) or if they do, a browser wouldn’t be able to read the file. Filenames can contain “_” (an underscore) and “-” (a dash) but that’s about it for non-text characters. These two characters are useful for substituting spaces between words. You should avoid naming any file containing anything besides plain text and numbers. What if someone calls you and asks for a page address and you have to recite all the character terms that your friend (or customer) doesn’t know. Or if you advertise your site over the radio, saying “running dash USA dot com” may cause a potential visitor from going to “runningdashusa.com” instead of “running-usa.com,” especially if they are a novice Internet user.
All of your filenames should be in lowercase format since Web browser input is case sensitive, meaning if someone wanted to go to your downloads page and typed “downloads” when you had “Downloads,” the browser might deliver an error message. No filename can be longer than 256 characters and you should not exceed 8-10 characters per filename, when possible for etiquette reasons.
If you work for a company or other organization, definitely check to see if they have their own standardized filename system before beginning.
You may now create a new HTML document in FrontPage Express. Save this page as “index.html” with the same procedure as discussed earlier in this chapter. At this time, we will now make you familiar with some layout design and implementation techniques.