Many of my students don’t see the need or pay much attention to naming conventions; especially in the beginning stages of learning web design. The subject of naming conventions is a big one and there are several articles that deal with it well. Brielfly, understand that how you name your file does matter for several reasons:
- The files should have meaningful names so you can easily identify them
- Other files may reference them and are looking for specific names
- Javascript functions sometimes require filenames to have a specific pattern to work properly
- Many Content Management systems, like WordPress, require template files to be named in a specific way so the application can call them.
- Some files like RSS feeds, require specific filenames so applications like iTunes can recognize them.
For all of these reasons and more, understanding the importance of filenaming conventions is important for web designers and producers of digital content.