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Website Organization and Directory Structure

The usual way to set up a site is to create a folder on your local hard disk that contains all the files for your site (referred to as the local site), and to create and edit documents within that folder. You then copy those files to a Web server when you are ready to publish your site and allow the public to view it. This approach is better than creating and editing files on the live public Web site itself, because it allows you to test changes in the local site before making them publicly viewable. When you're finished, you can upload the local site files and update the entire public site at once.

Break down your site into categories and put related pages in the same folder. For example, your company press releases, contact information, and job postings might all go in one folder, but your online catalog pages might go in a different folder. Use subfolders where necessary. This type of organization will make your site easier to maintain and navigate.

Decide where to put items such as images and sound files. For example, it's convenient to place all your images in one location, so that when you want to insert an image into a page, you know where to find it. Designers sometimes place all of the non-HTML items to be used on a site in a folder called Assets. This folder may contain other folders—for example, an Images folder, a Macromedia Shockwave folder, and a Sound folder. Or you might have a separate Assets folder for each group of related pages on your site, if there aren't many assets shared among such groups.

Use the same structure for local and remote sites. Your local site and your remote Web site should have exactly the same structure. If you create a local site using Macromedia Dreamweaver and thenupload everything to the remote site, Dreamweaver ensures that the local structure is precisely duplicated in the remote site.