Designing Your Website's Directory Structure

Written by Stephen Bucaro


---------------------------------------------------------- Permission is granted forrepparttar below article to forward, reprint, distribute, use for ezine, newsletter, website, offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as long as no changes are made andrepparttar 131685 byline, copyright, andrepparttar 131686 resource box below is included. ----------------------------------------------------------

Designing Your Website's Directory Structure

By Stephen Bucaro

Any kid, and their grandmother too, can make a webpage. There are many "wysiwyg" webpage design applications that let you create a webpage as easy as typing text. But only a few people can create a WEBSITE. The stumbling block is knowing how to link webpages together to form a website. I have seen many websites that consist of a single webpage - about a mile long!

The first problem is that websites are contained in virtual directories. You know that your webpages can be found at yourdomain.com, butrepparttar 131687 actual path to yourdomain.com onrepparttar 131688 web server may be known only byrepparttar 131689 system administrator. Andrepparttar 131690 system administrator can move your website to a different folder, or even a different computer, without changing its virtual address.

The second problem is that most people don't know how to write a relative link. Relative links haverepparttar 131691 advantage that you don't need to knowrepparttar 131692 path torepparttar 131693 webpage that you want to link to, you only need to know where it is "relative" torepparttar 131694 webpage containingrepparttar 131695 link.

Designing Your Directory Structure

The first step to implementing a website is to designrepparttar 131696 directory structure. Let's design a directory structure for a simple download website. The website consists primarily of articles and digital material that visitors can download. You could just dump everything atrepparttar 131697 top level ofrepparttar 131698 website. Good luck maintaining that website!

To keeprepparttar 131699 files organized, you need to create sub-directories (folders) onrepparttar 131700 website. Even thoughrepparttar 131701 website consists only of articles and digital downloads, you need five sub-directories, as described below.

- articles - downloads - general - common - cgi-bin

You understand whatrepparttar 131702 "articles" and "downloads" sub-directories are for, but what arerepparttar 131703 other three sub-directories for? It's standard practice to provide certain features on your website, as listed below.

- About - Contact - FAQ - Privacy Policy - Search - Sitemap - User Agreement

Each of these features requires a webpage. Instead of dumpingrepparttar 131704 webpages atrepparttar 131705 top level ofrepparttar 131706 website, or mixing them in with articles or downloads, let's put them together in a folder named "general" (I'm sure you can think of a better name).

All of your webpages use certain things in common, for example, your logo graphic. If your web server provides SSI (Server Side Includes) all your webpages can share a common header file and a common footer file. You might also define all your website's styles in a common style sheet. Let's put all of these files in a folder named "common".

Your contact page might use an email form. If your server provides server-side scripts, you would placerepparttar 131707 email form script in a folder named "cgi-bin". Cgi-bin stands for "Common Gateway Interface - Binary". Few people use CGI any more, and those that do don't use binary files, butrepparttar 131708 folder name has stuck as a traditional place to store scripts. Almost all websites come with a preconfigured cgi-bin folder, andrepparttar 131709 website may be configured so thatrepparttar 131710 cgi-bin folder isrepparttar 131711 only folder with rights to run scripts.

I would also recommend that you create certain sub-directories for some ofrepparttar 131712 above mentioned directories. Most web pages contain images. You could dump allrepparttar 131713 images inrepparttar 131714 same folder withrepparttar 131715 webpages, but when you get more than about 50 files in a folder, it becomes difficult to maintain. You should create an "images" sub-directory inrepparttar 131716 articles, downloads, and general directories. The downloads directory should also have a "files" sub-directory to storerepparttar 131717 downloads.

11 Ways To Indirectly Get To The Top Of Search Engines

Written by Gunnar Berglund


11 Ways To Indirectly Get To The Top Of Search Engines

There are millions of web sites trying to get listed inrepparttar top 20 spots ofrepparttar 131682 major search engines. That amounts to a lot of competition! I say if you can't get listed atrepparttar 131683 top, indirectly get torepparttar 131684 top.

How do you do this? Look uprepparttar 131685 top 20 web sites onrepparttar 131686 major search engines underrepparttar 131687 keywords and phrases people would find your web site. The key would be to then advertise on those web sites.

The most expensive way would be to buy ad space on those web sites. If you don't want to spend any money, you could userepparttar 131688 ten strategies below. These strategies may not apply to every web site.

1. Participate on their discussion boards. You could post questions, answer other peoples questions, and join in on conversations. Just include your signature file and link atrepparttar 131689 end of your messages.

2. Askrepparttar 131690 web site owner if they would like a free ebook to giveaway to their visitors. You could have them link to your web site or include your ad inrepparttar 131691 free ebook.

3. Submit content to their web site. You could write articles for their web site and include your resource box and link atrepparttar 131692 end ofrepparttar 131693 article. If they publish it, you'll indirectly be atrepparttar 131694 top ofrepparttar 131695 search engines.

4. Write an excellent article review of their web site, products or services. Then publishrepparttar 131696 review on your web site. E-mailrepparttar 131697 web site owner and tell him or her about it. They may link to your web site so their visitors read it.

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