
| File Organization One of the most important lessons I learned (the hard way) was file organization. Before jumping into page creation, decide the layout of your site and don't forget to make allowances for future additions. Visitors will find it easier to navigate your site if it is organized in some logical order; and in turn it will help you link to pages, edit and update pages, as well as find necessary images you created. Remember, a website is a never completed; it needs maintenance and updates, so carefully planning is a must. [ Back ] - File Naming - A good tip to remember is that if you keep your file names short, input will be faster. Also, by naming files with the short description of what the file contains, will make finding or identifying files easier. Create your own abbreviations for naming files. For example use "pic1.jpg" instead of "picture1.jpg". If you are going to have more than 10 pictures, then I suggest you use a 2 digit naming solution. By using 2 digits, files will sort better. Use "pic01.jpg, pic02.jpg", etc. Continuing with the above mentioned method, another example would be that if you plan to use lots of pictures, then you can group them by type. For instance to separate family pictures from pet pictures, you can group them by naming them: "picfam01.jpg, pictfam02.jpg", etc. and "picpet01.jpg, picpet02.jpg", etc. This would help in sorting the images when creating your "Photo" web page by grouping your like images together so that you could easily added them to each section of your page. You get the idea. By giving a descriptive name to your graphics and Html documents, page creation will be a lot easier. [ Back ] - Tree Structure - It is just a matter of grouping similar items in the same place. A good place to begin is to create a tree structure of what you want your site to look like. Keep in mind that you don't want to make the structure too deep causing visitors to view many pages before getting to the desired page. You also don't want to make the structure too wide by giving too many options thus confusing the visitor as to what to select. A good rule of thumb is that no visitor should have to click more that 3 times to get to the desired page. Balance is the key to a successful site. |
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