Image naming conventions : site design

[Chris]

Does anyone have any suggestions about the best way to name images which
will be part of a very large web site?
Any comments on image naming conventions or useful links will be appreciated
also!

Many thanks,

Chris.

 

[Whitecrest]

Does anyone have any suggestions about the best way to name images which
will be part of a very large web site?
Any comments on image naming conventions or useful links will be appreciated
also!

We named web servers after Muppets, but that probably wouldn't work in
this case.

 

[brucie]

in post: <

Does anyone have any suggestions about the best way to name images which
will be part of a very large web site?

britney-spears-nude-01.jpg
britney-spears-nude-02.jpg
etc etc

Any comments on image naming conventions or useful links will be appreciated
also!

if you have an image of a green widget then common sense should tell you
to call it something like "green-widget.jpg" calling the file a red
widget just wouldn't make sense.

 

[Barry Pearson]

Does anyone have any suggestions about the best way to name images
which will be part of a very large web site?
Any comments on image naming conventions or useful links will be
appreciated also!

What sort of images? My non-photographic images tend to have pretty ad-hoc
names. (Which is a problem of my own making).

My photographs have systematic names. I'll just summarise it in case this is
useful to you. I only have 100s, which may not be "very large" to you.

Each name is of the form:
project film frame size .jpg

So this may be:
eg95_10_25_3.jpg
meaning "Ecuador & Galapagos Islands 1995, film 10, frame 25, fits a 700 x 500
box". (The thumbnail ends in "0" not "3"). See:
http://www.barry.pearson.name/photography/pictures/eg95/eg95_10_25_3.jpg

The HTML page that displays that photograph is (not surprisingly):
http://www.barry.pearson.name/photography/pictures/eg95/eg95_10_25_3.htm

Note that I also have a reasonably systematic folder structure, also based on
projects. I think that is just as important.

This is film-based. I'm not sure what I will do when I take them digitally.
Perhaps I'll ask here for suggestions!

 

[Barry Pearson]

brucie wrote:
[snip]

if you have an image of a green widget then common sense should tell
you to call it something like "green-widget.jpg" calling the file a
red widget just wouldn't make sense.

I nearly said "that mixes content with presentation, you should leave "green"
and "red" to the stylesheet".

Then I decided not to say it.

 

[Toby A Inkster]

Any comments on image naming conventions or useful links will be appreciated
also!

Assuming you are using Apache, turn on MultiModes.

Then whenever you need to link to an image, instead of doing:

<img src="my_image.jpeg" alt="My Image">

do

<img src="my_image" alt="My Image">

That way, you can switch between different image formats in the future
without needing to update your HTML. (It also cuts 5 bytes out of your
HTML file.)

 

[Not in my trousers]

Does anyone have any suggestions about the best way to name images which
will be part of a very large web site?
Any comments on image naming conventions or useful links will be appreciated
also!

Many thanks,

Chris.

Give them meaningful names and use your search terms as much as possible for
both the image and the alt tag....

I.e. .. If you have a site selling decorative candles then
<img src="candles/red_decorative_candle_glass_holder.jpg" border="0"
alt="decorative candle in glass holder">

is better than
<img src="images/image010.jpg">

if you have bullet point and line images why not use wax.gif wick.gif as
names too ? ;-)

this will make your pages more meaningful both to human readers and search
engines and should improve your page ranking.

 

[Michael Fesser]

Assuming you are using Apache, turn on MultiModes.
[...]
That way, you can switch between different image formats in the future
without needing to update your HTML. (It also cuts 5 bytes out of your
HTML file.)

But adds more than 5 bytes to the response header ...

Micha

 

[Toby A Inkster]

But adds more than 5 bytes to the response header ...

True, but response headers don't take up disk space.

 

[kayodeok]

We named web servers after Muppets, but that probably wouldn't
work in this case.

The company I work for names servers after The Matrix characters...

 

[Not in my trousers]

True, but response headers don't take up disk space.

Neither does adding 5 bytes to a file (or even 50 bytes) unless the original
file is exactly the same size as a data allocation unit for your filesystem.

 

[Toby A Inkster]

Neither does adding 5 bytes to a file (or even 50 bytes) unless the original
file is exactly the same size as a data allocation unit for your filesystem.

Ooh! You got me there!

Still, leaving file extensions out of URLs is generally considered a Good
Thing.

 

[JustAnotherGuy]

Still, leaving file extensions out of URLs is generally considered a Good
Thing.

What would happen if someone tried to save and/or link externally?
/would've figured it out myself but don't know enough about configuring
apache yet.

 

[Hunter]

Does anyone have any suggestions about the best way to name images which
will be part of a very large web site?
Any comments on image naming conventions or useful links will be appreciated
also!

All my images are named using a date: jan01.jpg
They are also place in a date based directory:
/data/public/images/January/2004/jan01.jpg
And my html that references these images follow:
/data/public/html/January/2004/jan01.shtml

dave

 

[Toby A Inkster]

What would happen if someone tried to save and/or link externally?

Should be no ill effects.

 

[JustAnotherGuy]

JustAnotherGuy wrote:




Should be no ill effects.

I noticed LiveJournal did it, so from the weblog of the guy who started LJ:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/brad/
http://userpic.livejournal.com/5278661/2

IE saves as .jpg, but Firebird saves without extension..

/me declares method unusable
/me wonders whether it's only unusable on windows systems if it doesn't
have an extension...

 

[Christopher Finke]

The company I work for names servers after The Matrix characters...

At the University of Minnesota, the IT lab computers are named after Dilbert
and Simpsons characters, and the servers are named after LOTR locations:
Mordor, Rivendell, Moria, etc.

Chris Finke

 

[Jeffrey Silverman]

At the University of Minnesota, the IT lab computers are named after Dilbert
and Simpsons characters, and the servers are named after LOTR locations:
Mordor, Rivendell, Moria, etc.

Chris Finke

I couldn't help but butt in here. All my (i'm the admin) office's
computers are named after animals. newt, cow, chicken, cat, etc.

Hmm. Now that I said it, I realize that it is really quite boring.

My brother once named his office's computers after beans -- jelly,
garbanzo, lima, etc.

hmm. maybe that was boring, too.

 

[Jeffrey Silverman]

Does anyone have any suggestions about the best way to name images which
will be part of a very large web site?
Any comments on image naming conventions or useful links will be appreciated
also!

Many thanks,

Chris.

Common sense and consistency.

Don't name a picture of the great wall of china "paris-hilton-nude.jpg"
for example.

For SEO considerations, use full words and hyphens between words.

Keep all of your images in an "images" directory. Or name the directory
"img" or "pix" or whatever, but KEEP THE NAME CONSISTENT between web
applications and or websites.

Talk with others in your office or whoever else needs to be in on this
scheme and make sure everyone uses the same conventions.

It doesn't matter what conventions you use, as long as everyone
(including yourself) uses the same conventions.

Document the naming conventions somewhere. The documentation can be very
simple/basic -- just a table of name styles.

I cannot emphasize enough: consistency, common-sense, and communication!

The three-C's. Actually, I just made that up, but it sounds like a good
aphorism, axim, adage, proverb, maxim.

later...

 

[Toby A Inkster]

At the University of Minnesota, the IT lab computers are named after Dilbert
and Simpsons characters, and the servers are named after LOTR locations:
Mordor, Rivendell, Moria, etc.

At Imperial College Dept of Computing, the servers are birds (kestral,
emu, kite, etc).

The Maths Dept also has one called "elvis" as there used to be a ping-like
command that would say "elvis is alive" when you tested the connection.