Naming conventions are rules which enable the titling of electronic and physical folders, documents and records in a consistent and logical way. This ensures that the correct records can be located, identified and retrieved from a filing system in a timely fashion and that they are stored in an appropriate secure location. How you organize and name your files within CDN will also have a big impact on your ability to find those files later and to understand what they contain. You should be consistent and descriptive in naming and organize files/streams under CDN so that it is obvious where to find the specific stream and what the files contain. A logical organization of your stream names and files names is strongly recommended and ideally, the best time to think how to name and structure the stream names and files you create is at the start of using our CDN.
Good practice dictates that all information (stream names, files, documents, or records) should be identifiable and traceable. This can be achieved by following good practices by applying referencing to all stream names/files.
- Keep file/folder and stream names short, but meaningful.
- Avoid unnecessary repetition and redundant words in file/stream names and file paths.
- Use capital letters to delimit words, not spaces. You can use underscores (e.g. file_name.xxx), Dashes (e.g. file-name.xxx), No separation (e.g. filename.xxx), Camel case, where the first letter of each section of text is capitalized, (e.g. FileName.xxx)
- When including a number in a file name always give it as a two-digit number rather than one, i.e. 01, 02 … 99, unless it is a year or another number with more than two digits.
- If using a date in the file name always state the date ‘back to front’, and use four-digit years, two digit months and two digit days: YYYYMMDD or YYYYMM or YYYY or YYYY-YYYY.
- Avoid using common words such as ‘video’ or ‘live’ at the start of file names, unless doing so will make it easier to retrieve the contents.
- Order the elements in a file name in the most appropriate way to retrieve it.
- The file names of records relating to recurring events should include the date and a description of the event.
- Avoid using non-alphanumeric characters in file names.