Lesson 1: Filenames and Folder Structure
Folder and filenames
There are some people taking this class who are exploring with this editor and only plan to create a few documents. There are others who will be editing existing sites or creating new sites. If you are working on a website, particularly a new website, spend time thinking about what type of documents you will be creating and what filenames or folder names you will want to use.
If your files will be permanently on the CALS server, you should know that our College web guidelines discourage the use of meaningless abbreviations and upper case letters. The procedure for getting a directory for a "credit" class is straightforward. Directories for departments and counties have already been set up. If you have a project that cuts across multiple departments or units, you can request a directory area. You can talk to me (ffolinda@ag.arizona.edu) to get advice on the best place for a particular web project you are planning, if you are in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
For this class, people have been assigned temporary folders on the CALS server, to facilitate posting of files during the class.
After the class, if you are not in the College of Agriculture, you will need to move your files to another server if you want to keep the site active. You need to talk to the webmaster or system's manager for the particular server you will be using. Some servers are tightly controlled, with content going through one person or a small group. Other servers are more relaxed, in terms of who can put materials on the server.
If you are on a Unix computer using the Apache operating system, such as the CALS server, filenames and folder names should be ONE WORD, even though it is a long word. Be kind to people who will be using your website, and try to give a filename that describes that particular document. You can use either the extension of .htm or .html, but be consistent on your website. Try to give meaningful filenames. Which of these filenames do you think are more useful for people trying to remember the filename?
| classes_html.htm masters-degree.html diagnos.html |
dis-mng.html feedback.html wsheds.htm |
Listed below are examples of web documents from the University of Arizona web space.
Notice the folder name(s) being used as well as the final document name. If you use upper case letters as part of the URL, then someone typing in the address most likely will have to use the shift key to get those upper case letters (this depends on policies on the local server and if the system's manager has done setups allowing for upper case and lower case letters for folder names).
If you know that your web project is going on a Unix server using the Apache operating system, such as the CALS server, I encourage you to name the main file (first file which opens) either index.htm or index.html. Your URL can then stop with the directory name rather than have names like /nineplanets/nineplanets.html.
Folder structure
Regarding folder structure, you need to think about the short term and long term life of the website. If this is a small site and you are the only one working on it, you can put all files in one folder area, both on your hard drive and on the server you will be using. If you plan on a lot of images in your site, consider creating a folder just for images.
If you expect that different people will be working with the website, in the near future, I encourage you to create different subfolders for each person. Although Dreamweaver allows you to check files in and out (which is largely used for multiple people working on the same site), over-writing of existing documents can be minimized if each person is working in a different folder within the main directory. For example, if you are creating a class site, the main class area might have a name of abe999, and a T.A. may be responsible for putting up class notes each week. However the T.A. does not change any of the other documents. Therefore, if you create a subfolder under abe999 called classnotes, you can request that the T.A. has access to that folder and not the general files.
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This document is part of a series of lessons on Dreamweaver Basics, given by Linda Ffolliott, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Arizona.