Other Important Conventions

It is important to keep words like "author," "final," or "draft" out of a file name.  While this may seem counterintuitive to the previous topic of using descriptive language, most times these are unecessary words and esoteric.  Typical users do not need to be told that they are accessing a "final" version; they expect it.  If the document being posted on your site is not a final version, then it should not have been posted to begin with.

As with most things, an exception does exist.  In some cases the law may require each version of a particular document to be posted.  In this case, adding a date or reference to differentiate file versions may be acceptable.  Just remember - this type of use case is the exception rather than the rule.

This concept is a simple one and most will already follow this naturally.  However, it still needs to be addressed as there are still web pages on the Internet with page names like "page-about-dalmations-created-for-children-on-september-15-2005.html."  Most likely, if you see a page name like this, you would think someone mistyped the description into the page name.  Even so, we must be vigilant to keep page names brief and concise.  In our exagerrated example, the page may be concise but most certainly is not brief.  The user could have simply named the page dalmations.html.

Try to keep page names at a three word maximum.  Occasionally, you may venture beyond three words, usually when creating News Articles, Events, or Content Fragments. These should be noted as the general exceptions to the rule.  

Letters...Numbers...Hyphens.  Easy to remember - easy to follow. Do not include any special charactes other than hyphens which we use to separate words. If there are any already in your filenames - Remove them. Certain symbols will cause nothing but headaches in your authoring journey. Others are simply prohibited. Spaces should also be stripped out of filenames and hyphens used to break apart words visually.

So the bottom line is:  If it is not a hyphen, DO NOT USE IT IN A FILENAME.

Do not include dates in your asset's filename. This can become extremely confusing to users, especially when individuals utilize different styles of filename formatting. The only times dates should be included within a filename is when they are for meeting minutes and agendas.

If dates are added, be consistent in their usage and stick with a single naming convention for these. Avoid or strictly use physical month names or numeric references for dates. For example, a properly-dated document would be "2023-10-12-meeting-agenda.pdf" and "meeting-agenda-october-10-2023.pdf." Be consistent and don't mix these, as it then becomes a problem and pain point for authors when trying to find a specifically dated file. Prepending dates in the filename is also preferred, since agencies tend to also include a specific committee or board name. This makes it hard to tell the difference between files currently loaded in AEM since there is a visual cut-off of the filename after so many displayed characters.

Reserved words are words or a group of characters which have a specific use and are prohibited from use in any other manner.  While AEM does not list any specific reserve words, it is a good idea to avoid reserved words from the system you are operating.  AEM is bulit on a Linux-based system.  Linux has special reserve characters for filenames; however, since the hyphen is the only special character you should use in a filename, no issue should arise.  The Web Content Management team recommends you refrain from using the following as filenames: 

• CON
• PRN
• AUX
• COM followed by any number, such as COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, COM5, COM6, COM7, COM8, COM9
• LPT followed by any number, such as LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, LPT4, LPT5, LPT6, LPT7, LPT8, LPT9
• reserved words for "empty", such as NULL, NUL, NIL
• special directory names, such as sys, system, etc, application, applications, app, apps, bin
• dll
• common usernames, such as sa, root, guest
  
• programing language terms, such as case, coproc, do, done, elif, else, esac, fi, for, function, if, in, select, then, until, while, cron, perl, php, java

The idea of using internal references is particularly relevant with forms. Some governent agencies tend to name the files only with the internal form numbers, which is not helpful nor descriptive for end-users. For example, if Form 1234 is a form for requesting a payroll deduction, a good file name would be "form-1234-payroll-deduction" as it indicates both the internal form number and a way to immediately gauge what the form may relate to just by looking at the filename.