Preserved Topic: uploading files (Page 1 of 1)

Well, I'm finally on the brink of uploading files for my new site. It will be my first, and it's a doozy !

5 separate navigators, over 80 (yup, 80)rollover images, 30 or so experimental site logo's, a vote page to vote on logo's, page fades, etc...

(still can't get my popups to work though..)

Anyway..all this stuff is on my HD in a bunch of separate files. Is there anything I should note when uploading all this stuff?

Is there any one "right" way of assembling folders on my server? Any tips for me? Things I should do? Or not do?

P.S. There's NO WAY I'd be at this stage without the help of all you guys...to say I appreciate your help is the understatement of the day.

Thanks Ever'body !

That! is a damn fine question. Guru's... ?

Organizationally speaking, there really is no right way to put together your files into folders if it's going to be a project that only you are going to be working on.

But you bring up an interesting question; how does one assemble all the images and html, cfm, asp and various other files into a coherant directory structure? This isn't gospel, but this is what I do:

We're working in environments that utilize long file names--be as specific as you possibly can, especially when naming all your thousands of little slices. I have had to delve through other people's designs in the past, and let me tell you, I wanted to beat them senselessly. Don't name things numbers, and don't let Imageready determine what your files are going to be called. For instance, if you've got a top/side menubar page layout, then you've clearly got a corner piece. Name is corner_piece.gif. If you've got rollovers, name them with phrases that make sense: option_information_mouseover.gif and option_information_mouseoff.gif. It may be painstakingly slow for a little while, but you'll find yourself very happy when you have to change things and you know exactly where all your files are.

Directory structure is just the same; don't be creative with this--be specific. It's important for people who might have to update the files.

Similarly, for every site I put together, I do a print-out of the complete directory structure and a small blurb about what's in each one for my clients to set aside and save for when I'm not updating something ('cuz they don't want to pay for it) and have an intern do it.

It's just being decent to the ones that pay your bills and put food on the table.

Hope this helps.

I always try to get my file structure on the server to match what I have on my desktop. For the most part. That way I can keep the code pretty much the same without having to switch the paths on all my pages when I upload.

Usually you will find that you have an htdocs folder and a cgi-bin folder. These are your two main directories. Though many times you can run cgis outside of the cgi-bin, it is always a good idea to keep these in this directory for security purposes as well as it's pretty much a standard.

In my htdocs folder I will have my main page (index.html), my graphics or images folder, a stylesheet folder and a js folder (I don't usually dynamically link these but it would be a good idea to set these up and use them. Then I have all the subdirectories off of the main site. for example most sites have one home page. Off this page they frequently go to sub-catagories of the site. While these can all be in the same folder I like creating directories just to keep one area from getting too messy. The other advantage is that you can place index files in these as well which keeps URLs a bit more intuitive for the user. And then I will continue breaking down from there. The one area of my site they may get a bit cluttered is the images directory but putting these all in one place keeps the code a bit cleaner and easier to maintain.

Does that help?


Walking the Earth like Kane

pretty much the same as bitdamaged... keeps things simple... normally create a site folder/directory and inside that have a page folder, image folder, apps folder and a shared folder.... and then any sub folders depending on teh size of the website...

Thanks again for the help all.

I'm a little nervous...this thing is getting cumbersome. I'm sure I'll spend at least the weekend rerouting/renaming files...

But now I'm really happy I sliced up everything myself (with, of course, lotsa help here!) and didn't use Image Ready. That should help.

I actually named my slices top_1,top_2,top_3 etc..
And my buttons home_on, home_off, home_cl, etc..

Besides, Image Ready code baffles the hell outta me.

Wish me luck !

I don't use it but this was one of the coolest features of Dreamweaver when I did use it. It has a built in ftp/site maintenance tool that makes keeping all the code linked to the images linked and in the right place etc.


Walking the Earth like Kane

Well, this is one of my main hobbies nowadays, building cool directory structures that I won't hate a few years from now. Wanna guess what the directory structure looks like for the OZONE site? (shudder!) Picture 800+ items, loose in the top level. AND I have tons and tons of directories in that list too! Messy. Makes me cringe. I'll NEVER clean it up, not really.

When I build sites nowadays, I try and make the perfect directory structure *before* I start. Even so, things will get away from you. The GurusNetwork site had a nice directory structure once, but even it's getting messy. (Admittedly, we have a dozen people uploading files into it, it does work for all of us, what a miracle!)

Here's the overall structure I shoot for nowadays...

index.html <-- the front page

---common (directory)
------templates (directory of all the template bits that make up the format of the rest of the pages)
------scripts (directory of javascripts, style sheets, etc...)

---images (ALL the images go here)
------buttons
------interface
------blahblah... (More directories inside here, as needed.)

---content (directory where I keep all of the different areas, generally the same as the interface buttons.)
------entry
------aboutus
------contact
------etc, etc...

---work (directory of my working files! Nice to have access when you're not at home or work.)

SO! This might seem kind of extreme at first, but when all is said and done, when you FTP to the site you see nothing but this...

index.html
---common
---content
---images
---work

You'll probably end up with a "robots.txt" file and maybe some.htaccess type stuff, but your main directory should look *empty* when you first see it. All the heavy stuff lives under the hood, you'll be happier for it.

Now, how do you get back to the top every time to get to that image you need? You can always point to the top of the domain by starting your URL's with a "/". So, you could be 4 directories deep and call for "/index.html", it'll go right to the top and then down again. Useful. I gotta go cook dinner now, but I have more to say on this matter, how to name images, for instance. Later!


Your pal, -doc-

This thread is making me feel guily... 'cause I just put everything in the root folder.
I do think that makes the actual coding easier, never having to worry about what folder an image is in, but I can see how it could get very ugly for large sites.

I do think I am good about naming my pictures and html files though, so I need not feel as guilty about that too <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/tongue.gif">

With the exception of the cgi-bin, I usually organize things according to the navigation of my site. The home page and items common to all pages (template images, css, etc.) go in the root, stuff under "About Us" would go in /aboutus, stuff under Employment would go under /employment. Makes sense to me when I'm trying to find something and makes it easy for the user to find things, too. If he wants to come back to the employment section in the future, he can always type domain.com/employment.

I know a lot of people put all the html docs in the root and all the images in an /images directory, but that never made much sense to me. If it's an extensive site, I could have a lot of images in the /images directory and that can get to be too much for me to wade through to find what I want. I just put all the Employment html and images in /employment.

But, it's all a matter of personal preference. I do agree with being specific with file names, though. The last job I had, one of the guys there always shortened *everything*. He would name something spcr.gif instead of just calling it spacer.gif. Or d_img.jpg instead of default_image.jpg. Drove me nuts.

only thing with using more than 8 characters Wes, is that when you ftp to a unix based server it don't recognise more than 8 so ya have to rename all your files... well thats what I find..

Doc that is *the* most usefull info. Huge thanks for describing it like that. That should be a tute for Guru's without doubt. Blown away ....again! Please More... yes more....

Wead (who is staring at about 800 items loose in the top level of TrypTych)

[This message has been edited by Weadah (edited 06-10-2000).]

VogonP, what are you talking about? UNIX can recognize file names up to 256 characters, it's mac that's limited to 32 characters, and windows too (?) I believe? Sounds like your FTP program is the one renaming the files to an ancient windows/dos standard, not a unix thing at all. I've dealt with some systems where the unix guys went way overboard with descriptive names, such as "window_default_xserver_image_on_emplyment_subsector_default.gif", monstrosities like that.

When I name my directories for content, I would name them something like "/employment", right? Then I would name the image that was the button for that "employment_off.gif", and the rollover "employment_on.gif", etc... This way all of the folders and images have the same base name, I can generate different kinds of pages just by knowing that one variable, build URLs out of it, what have you. If I decide to try a different version of the buttons, with different colors or effects, I can put them in a new image directory, buttons2 perhaps, and simply change the directory pointer one place and see different things happen.

Heh, wead, check this out! The macintosh file system "open" dialog ganks on directories with unrealistic amounts of things in it, like my web site. I can't even view all the files in an "open" dialog box!

Another thing I do is keep an exact mirror of my online stuff in my offline directory on my hard drive. Then I can view things by "last modified" date in the listings, and easily see what files I changed that now need uploading. It's kind of fun when you look down at the bottom, here's a piece from 1996, http://www.ozones.com/nopigs.gif - I have things even older on my hard drive, but that's the last modified date on this server. (My offline date for this piece is July 1995. Heh.)

Your pal, -doc-

hey Doc... I wasnt meaning UNix couldnt recognise more than 8 characters... I use ftp lite and am uploading form a win95 OS and whenever I view my hard drive and a directory with files with names more then 8 characters, then ftp lite reads the file names as blahbla~.html .... I hope I didnt confuse anybody.... so when I upload the offending file I have to rename it... therefore.... I have got into the habot of naming all my files that I might have to upload with a max of 8 characters...

aplogises if I added confusion.. maybe it is just a ftp lite thingy?

cheers

~Vp~

I have made many mistakes in organizing my server. I don't suggest any sepcifc way of organizing your server. Organize it in a way that you can understand. Some people use code, while other people use baareviations that they can understand (img for the image directory).
Take the time and figure out how you want to organize your server. It will pay off in the long-run, when you're looking for a file you uploaded 2 years ago.

Once again, thanks everybody.

And thanks Doc, you gave me a lot to think about.

(I feel almost honored when Doc answers me. Am I a dork or what? It's like writing Dell tech support and getting an e-mail from Michael Dell.)

I'm sure I'll be on the floor in a fetal position by Sunday night, but I'll try not to bother you all too much.

Doc, I do the same thing with the local copy. I develop on my local drive, then upload all the new stuff.

I also keep a directory, structured like the "finished" files, where I keep all the "work" files ? the layered Photoshop files, original scans, etc. Then, there's the exact backup copy of all that on my other machine.

It's nice having three copies of my site around. Believe me, I've been dumb enough to have to use them...

Hey I didnt mean to discount anyone elses reply there either, just Doc's diagram helped it all make sense.

Offline there is just so much crap to wade through. By the end, my web site will be 1000's of files deep. Good structure is needed from the begining I'm sure.

I got stuck in the 8 letter file name rut too. Being an old DOSser myself. The descriptive image naming is a grand idea.

c:\dos c:\dos\run run\dos\run

(running) cya =)

Totally off topic but do you think the new Mac OS will kill problems like the open file dialog? I keep reading great things about it, so mebbe....

Cya

Oh, I just *hope* the new OS X will kill that problem, my new beta disk is waiting for me at customs, I'm going to mount it on one of my alternate start-up volumes and see what it does. <windows jab>Hah! No risk here with the mac, good stuff that way. I have 3 partitions with three different versions of the OS right now, heh heh. What's one more?</windows jab>

Hey, I had that 8.3 problem with my windows 95, back when I *ran* windows 95. I'm retty sure that the problem was licked in W95, revision 2. (I keep a copy of that OS on CD, relatively stable OS.) You should be able to get the patches on the net, I'd think.

Your pal, -doc-

i dunno doc... if i remember correctly, analog's old man threw the beta on a partition residing on his nice g3 laptop and it torched the whole thing...

of course getting details from analog would be a lot smarter, but that's the general idea.

cheers.mikey.milker