One of the services I offer my customers is to install scripts and help maintain their sites.
What I find the first time I access their site can only be describes as horrific!!
No file organization, no naming conventions, copies of files and redundant files everywhere. It's important to maintain your site in an organized and orderly fashion so that the ability to link your files together becomes a lot of easier and efficient.
As a web visitor to a site like http://www.easywebresources.com you won't notice all of the files that make up the site but as owner and administrator I know exactly how the files are organized. There are dozens of files that make up that site and I've seen some sites that can have hundreds and even thousands of web pages, files and download documents so without some kind of organization you would be lost.
The first thing to do is to setup a site structure in a logical way so you are able to find types of documents/files easily.E.g., most sites contain some kind of images/graphics files that are used for headers or pictures so these types of files should be stored in a folder called (strangely enough) images.
Most good web hosting companies will provide you with a folder called cgi-bin. This folder generally is used for server side cgi scripts that add functionality to your site. Things like guest book scripts, visitor counters etc. These scripts would be installed in the cgi-bin folder.
If you store documents on your web server then you might create a documents folder and store your online documents in there. If you write articles then you might have an articles folder too.
So now we have the following folders -
images
cgi
bindocuments
articles.
Course these folders could have subfolders so you might have subfolders in your articles folder relating to each category you might write on e.g articles/health and artcles/computers etc.
You'll also find that there are 'system' folder located with the folders you create. These system folders should be left behind because, as their name implies, they're used by your web server for system functions like storing your incoming email etc. If you're not sure of a particular folder the safer to leave it alone or ask your web host support.
Now when you access your site using an FTP (file transfer protocol) Program like WSFTP or SmartFTP, you'll find it normally puts you 'sitting' just under the web root of your site.
You are able to tell that by the folders you are able to see when you first log in. Generally you will see some sorts of mail folders (they'll have mail in their names) and perhaps a log folder - these are examples of the 'system' folders I mentioned before.
This area under the web root is NOT accessible from the web so your web visitors would never see any of the files or folders that are located in here. It's a good place to store password files and other documents you wish to keep secure from the web.
There will also be a folder that's accessible from the web and it will be called something like 'xxxxxxxx-www' (where xxxxxxxx is your site user name normally) or it could be called something like 'public_html'. If you're unsure then ask your web host support.
This public or web accessible folder is where you create your home pages and other web pages, files, articles and documents that you want web visitors to be able to access or that you would like to create links to in your web pages.So you FTP to your site, click on the public folder to open it up and start creating your folder structure in there. As I mentioned earlier, if you're using a decent web hosting company, you should already see a cgi-bin folder there as a bare minimum.
I hope I have managed to stress the importance of keeping your site organized and explained, at least a bit, how your site should be structured.
Terry Jones owns
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