5.5. File naming

You have total control of how your xml files and html files are named in the layout.xml file. Problems can occur if your server doesn't support the character set or character combinations that you use for filenames. If you want to search for a file it only makes for hard work if you have to type in escaped spaces, tabs, apostrophes and other characters.

You can make it easier by using relatively brief names, by not mixing upper and lower case (some file systems, some servers are case sensitive!), and generally keeping your filenames 'tidy' and hence easier to manage.

If, as suggested above, you cleanly link the filename and the id of a webpage, then the constraints of an id are applied to your filenames. The gory detail is available here but put simply, it must start with a letter and thereafter can contain letters, numbers and a few other characters (I only ever use the period (.) to combine characters, e.g. proc.k as an id value). If you stick to simple naming conventions the complexity is reduced.

As you might reasonably conclude, I have had problems with naming issues, which is why I might appear to make a big deal of it.