Usable file and directory names make usable URLs

Use whole words in file and directory names where possible. If you must use an abbreviation, only use one that is widely known amongst the users of your site.

It is much easier for a user to remember, to read out (on the phone to a friend, over a desk to a colleague), or to type in a URL where whole words are used.

Advanced users who attempt to locate information by guessing URLs will be more likely to find information on your site if you use whole-word file names or common abbreviations.

Using appropriate whole-word names also makes site maintenance easier. A file named refunds.html in a directory named policies can be readily identified as the policy on refunds for sales to clients of your company, even by someone who didn't create the file.

Never use spaces or non alpha-numeric characters in your file names. These are not legal characters in URLs and will be converted to their hexadecimal equivalent, which is then preceeded by a percentage sign (%). This conversion results in some pretty ugly URLs that can be difficult to type, communicate or remember.

For example, a file named my holiday.html, in a directory named travel info would be translated to travel%20info/my%20holiday.html

If you must visually separate a two-word file or directory name, use a dash (hyphen) rather than an underscore.

When hyperlinks are formatted with an underline it is usually not possible to see the underscore. For instance my_file_ name.html would become my_file_name.html. Some users may assume that the URL contains spaces, and may then be unable to find your web page.

It is best to use all lower-case characters in file and directory names. Although not all web servers are case-sensitive, most are (at least at this point in time), and if users get the case wrong, they won't find your page.

Combinations of upper- and lower-case characters in file and directory names are more difficult to type and to remember for both users and site maintainers.

Almost all web servers are set up to look for a default index file, usually namedindex.html, but sometimes default.html or welcome.html (check this with your web server administrator). This is the file that is loaded when a directory URL is used. For example, using the URL http://www.deyalexander.com.au/resources/ will result in the file index.html in my directory named resources, to be loaded.

Every web content directory should have an index file. This is usually a page that would provide links to the other resources located within the directory. There are two good reasons for creating an index file in all your content directories. First, using the default index file name means you can use shorter URLs: http://www.deyalexander.com.au/resources/ instead of http://www.deyalexander.com.au/resources/index.html.

Second, it provides an easy means of preventing users from seeing raw directory listings when they use directory URLs (ie. URLs ending in a trailing slash [/]). This is a better approach than making the directory contents unreadable by using access control restrictions which then results in the user seeing an (oftentimes unhelpful) error message.