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Naming conventions

Assets (pages, folders, or files) in the CMS have various fields that control the name of the asset in the website's navigation menu, the title of the page, and the URL of live asset. When setting or updating names of assets, be sure to follow the preferred naming conventions.

CMS fields that control names

  • Display Name - (metadata field) the name of a page or asset that appears in the navigation menu. This is typically the same as the Title of the page, unless the Title is too long, in which case a shortened version is used for the Display Name. The Display Name is usually used to generate the File Name in the CMS.
  • Title - (metadata field) the full name of a page that appears on the web page (the title at the top of the page content).
  • File Name - the name of the asset (folder/page/file) in the CMS Site Content menu. (Formerly known as the System Name). The file name is what appears in the live URL so it should not contain any spaces or special characters. The file name is usually generated from the Display Name. 

Naming conventions

  The File Name of all assets (pages, folders, or files) should not have any spaces. All spaces should be replaced with dashes or underscores (dashes are preferred for university style and consistency).

It is also best practice for the name to consist of lowercase characters.

The File Name and folder path of the asset in the Site Content menu determines the URL of the asset on the site. While most browsers can display a web page with spaces in its URL, many applications that parse web pages and display content in particular formats (such as RSS feed readers) have difficulty recognizing and displaying URLs with spaces. 

  Where applicable, File Names of assets (pages, folders, or files) should be generic (no dates or versions in the file name).

If previous versions of a page or file do not need to be archived, keep the File Name generic, without any version numbers or dates. When the page or file needs to be updated at a later date, the asset can be overwritten at the same location, thereby avoiding the need to relink and republish pages. The updated asset can be republished and all pages linking to it will automatically be updated as well.

For example:

Enter a document File Name of registration-form, rather than registration-form-2018.

Enter a page File Name of statutory-holidays, rather than 2018-statutory-holidays.

Note that when creating NEW folders and pages in the CMS, the File Name will automatically be created based on what you enter in the Display Name field.

For example:

When creating a new page, you can enter Statutory holidays in the Display Name field, and the File Name will automatically be set as statutory-holidays. Therefore, do not put years or other version language in the Display Name field.

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