Planning a site’s folder structure
Although it is possible to put every file of a site in a single folder, it usually makes more sense to group related files in subfolders within a top-level folder. There are many approaches to grouping site files. The examples below show two possible strategies:
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Example A |
Example B |
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Two methods of organizing files in folders
In Example A, files are organized according to site areas. For example, all the files for the Products area of the site go into the “products” folder, where they are further divided into subfolders according to specific products. Each folder might also have an “images” subfolder to contain image files.
In Example B, files are organized according to type. All HTML files go into the top-level “My Web Site” folder. CSS files, image files, JavaScript files, and other resource files go into subfolders for each resource file type.
The organizational strategy you choose depends largely on the kind of Web site you are creating and its size. For relatively small sites with no clearly defined areas, something like Example B can be convenient, since it limits the number of folders you have to manage. For large corporate sites, the folder organization is likely to be more like Example A, but far more complicated, since documents might be further organized by corporate division, international regions, and so forth.
Keep in mind that the folder structure of a site need not have any relationship to its logical structure—the hierarchy of “parent” and “child” pages. For example, the product description page for Namo WebEditor might logically be considered a “child” of the products index page, but the document does not need to reside in a subfolder of the products folder.
Related topics
Planning a site’s logical structure