Naming conventions for your web pages

For technical reasons every page created in our content management system must have a unique filename. Authors need to give careful consideration to the creation and saving of new web pages or documents for downloading.

It is important to ensure that newly-created pages or download documents are given a name that has not already been used by another author.

The name selected must still be meaningful (both to the author and to members of the public).

Why does every web page need a unique filename?

The content management systems saves pages as "objects". Each object has to be unique, and it is assigned a unique name. This uniqueness allows the "object" to be displayed faster and more efficiently than traditional file structures and naming conventions would usually permit, and also allows a degree of flexibility in presentation of material online.

How web pages appear to citizens

It is important to remember that the filename you use for your web page (or "object") will appear on the public website. So do try to avoid calling pages something like "rubbishpage.htm" or "waffle.htm"! Instead, you should use meaningful but concise names - names that describe what the page is about - perhaps 'education-intro.htm' or 'regenerationcontacts.htm', and so on.

Do NOT use spaces or other special characters in page or document filenames

Do not use spaces or any other special characters such as '&', '%' or '+' in your filenames
Do not use underscores ('_') in filenames
All filenames must be lower case
All filenames must have .htm at the end of them

It is okay, however, to use a hyphen - for example 'regeneration-news.htm', but please limit their usage as much as possible.

Names to avoid

Avoid using page names that are highly likely to have been used before elsewhere on the website. Examples include 'faq.htm', 'help.htm', 'intro.htm', 'homepage.htm', 'contacts.htm'. Instead, for example, consider prefixing your faq page with a unique identifier - say, 'pests-faq.htm'.

Consider devising your own naming convention

You might decide to devise your own convention for naming web pages. For example you could prefix all your pages with the name (or an abbreviation) of the service being described - perhaps 'ctaxhelp' for Council Tax Help.

What happens if I save a web page with a filename that has already been used?

Due to a quirk of the RedDot content management system, if you use a filename that is already in place on the website no warning is given. This means that both pages will be published to the live site, the first page being overwritten by the second page.

We have implemented a file name check facility which must be used to confirm that the filename you have chosen is unique. If the check indicates the filename is already in use, please try a variation. Only submit your workflow when the filename is confirmed as unique.