Hi.

I have a website in the works that's going to have a lot of images from various trips that I've been on. I'm going to (try to) design my own image browsers using PHP. I have a question about website file structure/heirarchy with regard to images. Is it better to consolidate all images into one "images" directory (and sub-directories), or should each content directory have its own image directory? For example

Home / Images / Germany Images / Img 1, Img 2, etc.
/ Germany / Germany.php

or

Home / Germany / Germany.php
/ Germany / Germany Images / Img 1, Img 2, etc.

What are the pros and cons of each method? Which is more popular?

Thanks

Hi Drulldurham,

Welcome to Webmaster-Talk Forums

Site archetecture is very important so your question is a good one.

Personally, I prefer organization to rule my outcome. For this reason, I use a very detailed structured system. I like to use sepeate folders for everything.

This works good for me, not necessariuly everyone else. A good rule of thumb is to develop a system that YOU can easily understand. WIth a second emphasis on the need for someone else to step in and have the ability to understand the organization.

I have seen sites that everything, images, pdf's, html, etc., all reside in the root folder. A real nightmare.

On the other hand I have seen sites that have a folder for every single page on the site. Over kill? Not necessarily. This provides for great organizational structure.

Usually somewhere in the middle works best. The level of organization that you deside to use should be commiserate to the size of the site. A site with 5 pages can all sit at the root folder with a possible folder for images. A site with 50 pages will need a bit more... A page with 1,000 is going to need quite a bit of structure in its architecture.

The level of architectural structure that you give your site should also be relation to your navigation. It should make sense. Especially if your site is one that is going to grow over time. Develop an architecture that will assist in the growth of the site anabling the ease of adding pages and understanding how these pages will be added to site navigation.

Hope this helps.

Chip

I have to agree with Chip on this one, more organization upfront will help in the end.

My usual habit is to put all my html files in the root directory. I have an images folder for images used throughout the site - headers, backgrounds and such. If I have photos, I make a 'photos' folder. In your case, for a gallery, I'd might make sub-folders under \photos, one folder for each set - Germany, Home, Family, etc.

On a small site, I'll put my CSS in the root folder, and if I have any javascript files, I'll put them in the root too. For a larger site where I might have more than one CSS file or more than one script, then I'll make separate folders for CSS and JS. If I have music or sounds, I will generally make a separate folder called 'sounds' or 'media'. The larger the site, the more organization will help you. For a big site, I might have sub-folders for the html files of different sections.