Web Services

Cascade Users Guide

Naming Convention


Page name

All pages in your website except for the homepage will need a unique page name.  Page Name in cascade refers to the actual name that will appear in the URL.  For example, if your page name is "my-page", the URL would look something like this "https://www.tamuk.edu/my-page.html".  Here are a few more examples.

Allowed 

https://www.tamuk.edu/mypage.html  
https://www.tamuk.edu/MyPage.html  
https://www.tamuk.edu/my-page.html  

Allowed But Not Recommended

example URL with underscore used in the page name

In this example, an underscore was used to separate the page name.  As you can see the underscore is hidden in the line under the URL to identify to the user that it is a hyperlink.  We do allow underscores however we strongly encourage using a hyphen instead.

Not Allowed

https://www.tamuk.edu/my%20page.html

In this example, a %20 was added by the browsers to separate "my" and "page".  While the URL is technically valid, we have restricted the ability to add spaces when choosing a page or file name to prevent confusing URL's.

Folder Name

When creating a folder in Cascade you will be asked to choose a folder name.  The folder name is identical to the page naming convention rules.  Your folder name will appear before each page that it contains, so it is important to keep the name brief to condense the URL as much as possible.  Example below.

Do this: https://www.tamuk.edu/forms/myformspage.html

Not this: https://www.tamuk.edu/departmental-forms/myformspage.html

Index Page (aka homepage)

The first page inside of every folder should have the page name "index" in lower case.  Pages named index are automatically recognized by all browsers without needing to type index.html.

Index URL examples image

Both URLs will arrive at the same location which is index.html.  Your index page's meta data should also be as informative as possible because of how web crawlers treat them.

File and Image Name

Similar to Page Name and File Name, spaces are also restricted when adding File and image names.  Avoid using dates and overly descriptive names to reduce the URL size and also prevent broken links in the event the name needs to change. The longer a URL, the less each individual word is weighted by the search engine. Long URLs look messy, are difficult to remember, and can cause problems when copying and pasting, since a potentially important part of the URL can get cut off. Some social media services also experience problems with long URLs. 

Use this: performance-report.pdf

Instead of this: 2017-performance-report-version6.pdf

System Blocks (XHTML/Data Definition Block)

System blocks are not included in the URL therefore they can include spaces.  However, to maintain consistency within the contents of your website, it is highly recommended to follow the same naming conventions mentioned above.

System assets include: Custom Blocks (landing page), Departmental Sublinks, and Internal Link