Thread

So today I handed the client their shiny, new EE CMS and before I had gotten back to the office they had emailed me a screenshot of an error.

It was a PHP error along the lines of: http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/205515/

So I sheepishly started looking for the cause by searching this forum, then deactivating modules, then started taking the templates apart.

Long story short, the very first image the client had uploaded was named:

*Atom $phere.JPEG

It was almost as if they were TRYING to break the system!

So before they could upload ‘delete * from table users.jpg’ I gave them a quick lesson in basic naming conventions for web files.

My hot tip is to remember this lesson during handover! It could save you a few hours of unnecessary debugging.

Ah yes file naming - it hurts sometimes 😊

I once told a client to name images using a brief description based on a common format, eg 2012_london_bus.jpg, as there were using filename based links and it would be useful for visitors to see what they were downloading.

Several days later had a phone call saying the site was broken, I went to look and saw something like this:

September_18th_2011_the_description_was_more_than_a_dozen_words_and_the_link_disappeared_off_the_side_of_the_page_and_they_moaned_at_me_because_the_site_was_broken.jpg

Their definition of “brief” was somewhat different to mine!

And then there’s filenames like DSC_2043.JPG - but don’t get me started…

Hi Dr Crypto,

Thanks for sharing! This is a good tip and something I most web devs just assume a user is going to know. 😊

Thanks again and have a great week.

Cheers,