Naming Schemes for web related files

A clever naming scheme can save time and simplify file management over the long term.

When attaching files that are part of a regular update (such as regular newsletters, reports or investor updates) it is important to name the files in a way that will make it easy for you and other members of staff to locate the files and work with them.

A file naming scheme can really help to streamline this process.

For example if your organisation publishes a weekly newsletter, a standard naming scheme might be tackled like this:

• Publication name: The Millstream Weekly
• Updated: Weekly
• File naming scheme: tmw-YYYY-TN-WN (A short way of saying the-millstream-weekly-2011-term1-week3.pdf)

Each week your oganisation might create a PDF file and a cover image... as the weeks go past your list of document files would grow as shown in the table below:

Newsletter File Name	Cover image file name
tmw-2010-t1-w1.pdf	tmw-2010-t1-w1.jpg
tmw-2010-t1-w2.pdf	tmw-2010-t1-w2.jpg
tmw-2010-t1-w3.pdf	tmw-2010-t1-w3.jpg

A consistent naming scheme makes it easier to locate files and then easier to:

• locate files to create links to them,
• helps to match the cover image or related files to the corresponding PDF
• helps with grouping together all the files created over a year