File Naming

In order to more easily keep track of the numerous photographs and audio files from a community history gathering event, it will be essential to have a system for standardizing file names.

If you have followed the system of Object ID stickers which we present in the Pre-Event Setup section, this will simplify the process.

In short, we recommend the following system for naming your files:

• YYYY-MM-DD is the date on which the event is hosted
• XXXX denotes the order in which that items were collected (i.e. 0001 is the first item, 0002 is the second, etc.)

Hence 2024-03-21-0004 would correspond to the fourth item collected on March 21st, 2024.

General Guidelines

Should you wish to use a different naming system, it is important to keep the following guidelines in mind:

• Are the filenames easily identifiable?
• Are they easily searchable?
• Are they easy for volunteers of different types to make sense of?

How to name photos:

You may have one photo of an object or many photos. Naming the files correctly will help when you’re ready to build your web site.

For an item ID of 2025-05-31-001-photo:

1. If there's only one photo, the photo name should be `2025-05-31-001-photo.jpg` or  `2025-05-31-001-photo.png`.
1. If there are multiple photos, use the base item ID and then use an underscore and then add numbers to the end of each photo, which allows you to control which order the photos is playing. For example, the first photo in the sequence would be named `2025-05-31-001-photo_01.png` and the second photo on the sequence would be named `2025-05-31-001-photo_02.png`. The zero before the number is one and two in these examples helps the computer sort them in order. The photo with the lowest number will be used as the featured photo on the page with the whole list of items.