These settings help keep files consistent and compatible, reducing problems across different editors, operating systems and web servers.
For Web Development
- End Of Line (EOL): LF (\n) > Applies only to text files (1)
- Encoding: UTF-8 without BOM > Applies only to text files (1)
- Final newline: End every text file with one newline character > Applies only to text files (1)
- Trailing whitespace: Remove spaces and tabs from the ends of lines > Applies only to text files (1)
- Filename case: Linux is case-sensitive, consistently prefer lowercase filenames
For WordPress specifically
- PHP-only files: Omit the closing ?>
- File permissions: Normally 644 for files and 755 for folders
More info
Types of files
- Text files: .php, .css, .scss, .js, .html, .json, .xml, .svg, .txt, .md, .po, .pot…
- Binary files: .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif, .webp, .ico, .woff, .woff2, .mo, .pdf, .zip…
End Of Line (EOL)
- CRLF = carriage return + line feed = \r\n = 0D 0A > Used traditionally by Windows
- LF = line feed only = \n = 0A > Used by Linux and modern macOS > Recommended for Web Development
UTF-8 / BOM
- UTF-8 = Standard encoding text characters into bytes > Used across Windows, Linux, macOS and the web
- BOM = Byte Order Mark = EF BB BF > Optional invisible bytes placed at the beginning of a UTF-8 file
- UTF-8 without BOM = UTF-8 text without EF BB BF at the beginning > Recommended for Web Development