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**Naming conventions**
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## Naming conventions
1. All lowercase.
2. No spaces!
3. Only letters, numbers, and dashes (-).
**These apply to all files & all folders created for the Web Dev courses.**
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## All lowercase
Different operating systems treat capitalization in filenames differently.
**We’ll standardize on lowercase to make things more consistent and easier.**
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MacOS & Windows are case-insensitive operating systems: they don’t distinguish between upper & lower case letters.
`hello.txt` & `HELLO.txt` are exactly the same file.
Linux and other Unix-based operating systems are case-sensitive—when we deploy our websites they will be going onto Linux-based web hosts.
`hello.txt` & `HELLO.txt` are completely different files.
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## No spaces!
URLs literally cannot have spaces in them.
**Since we’re making websites & everything is a URL, our filenames also cannot have spaces.**
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Technically URLs can have spaces, but not space characters. In URLs spaces are usually encoded as: `+` or `%20`
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## Only letters, numbers, and dashes (-)
URLs only allow ASCII characters unless the characters are encoded.
**Since the specification specifically disallows non-ASCII characters our filenames will use only basic characters.**
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As for dashes, that’s a Google-specific problem:
*Google will separate words with dashes into separate keywords:*
- `prehistoric-creatures-of-the-deep.jpg` becomes `prehistoric`, `creatures` `deep`
*Google combines together words separated with underscores:*
- `underwater_amphibians.html` you’d have to search for exactly `underwater_amphibians` to find this page
- This is sometimes a good thing, specifically with code & function names—but in most situations it doesn’t help search results.
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## Good
```
index.html
dinosaurs.jpg
t-rex.jpg
prehistoric-creatures-of-the-deep.html
```
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## Bad
```
Index.html <-- Web server won’t find & load the page
t rex.jpg <-- Browser may not be able to find the image
prehistoric_creatures_of_the_deep.jpg <-- Google will treat this as a single word
```
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## Naming conventions
1. All lowercase.
2. No spaces!
3. Only letters, numbers, and dashes (-).
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## Videos & tutorials
- [Naming conventions ➔](/topics/naming-conventions/)
- [Naming & paths cheat sheet ➔](/topics/naming-paths-cheat-sheet/)
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