Web Directory Structures

[Josh Huston]

>     When our site goes up, it will be moved to the main 
>     University server.  We have just been informed that at that 
>     time all of our files will need to be in one directory.

Well, they are wrong.  It is possible to create subdirectories within a
directory.  They're obviously lazy to create subdirectories and disperse all
files accordingly.  If that is the case, tell them that you can put it on
the server yourself.

>     What do you all think about so many pages being all in one 
>     directory?  Could you give me some feedback on the pro's and 
>     con's of this arrangement?  Of course it has a big impact on 
>     the structure of the internal page links.  Any other reasons 
>     why one way would be better than the other?

Putting all files in one directory can create confusion in the long term.
Once the size of your site grows, it will become more difficult to locate a
file you want to update.  If the files are divided according to it's topic
nature and you could easily locate the file and update it.  Since that you
had all your links set up this way, why bother to put all in one directory
and you'll have to update all links in every single files.  That's very time
consuming and it's not very efficient in the term of $$$.

>From my experience, I believe that it's the best to put all graphic files
(GIFS and JPEGS) in one directory so that at least two HTML documents can
share the same gif file.  How can this be beneficial to us?  It is known
that the browsers are capable of storing current images in cache and once
the second document calls the same file, the browser simply fetch the file
from the cache, thus increasing the speed of browsing the page. In addition,
keeping all graphic files in one directory can eliminate potential
duplicates, thus keeping the disk space at minimal.

I hope these will help you.  Any question, just drop me a note.

Josh
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Josh Huston                             Internet: hust0011 at gold.tc.umn.edu
WebMaster & CGI Programmer                        hust0011 at itlabs.umn.edu
University of Minnesota Libraries
160 Wilson Library                      Phone:   (612) 625-4343
Minneapolis, MN 55455                   Fax:     (612) 625-3428