Now that you can write HTML...Organizing Files on Your Server
Lessons learned by bitter experience. Organize your folders or directories with a plan for expansion from the beginning. Otherwise, you will be rewriting internal links as you organize your files into folders.
- You say directory, I say folder....
- Let me state at the outset, that in the following article (and likely in class as well), I will use the terms directory and folder INTERCHANGEABLY (meaning the organized sections within a hierarchial file system on a personal computer).
- In the beginning there was a root directory...
- The HTTP server software (be it httpd, or MacHTTP, or WebStar, or whatever) expects to find all your files within or in folders within your root directory. Files cannot be placed onto your computer from the Web unless you enable FTP and give someone the password to connect to you using Telnet, Fetch, or a similar utility.
- Group related files together.
- HTML files and the graphics that accompany them should reside within the same subdirectory if possible. If a graphic is used repeatedly in many files (for example, bullets or other standard icons) you might want it in your root directory for ease of writing anchors. It is possible to link to graphics in other folders, but.....you have to remember the path when writing the anchor!
- Enough is enough...
- You can "folder-ize" your folders too much. A folder should not contain 100 separate files, but 20 or 30 is ok. The purpose of a folder is to group like files to prevent having to scroll through your entire hard disk to find a file. And,... on a 486 computer that scrolls at light speed, that is not a small problem. Aggie Horticulture contained 1,475 files at the last backup.
- After editing a file, make sure you SAVE AS to the right folder...
- SimpleText, Notepad, and other text editors are nice tools. They may try to save your file in their resident folder, which needless to say, will wreck your links!
WebMasters was created and is taught by Dr. Dan Lineberger, WebMaster of Aggie Horticulture, Department of Horticultural Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843.
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