Architecting a Website
Architecting is just a fancy way of saying how to plan out your content and properly nest your folders and files.
Directories
Giving some thought to the directory structure will make it easier to make updates in the future.
about
articles
links
images
Assets Directory
Create a directory to contain your images. You could just place them directly in your root folder, but this will keep the directory structure cleaner. At the very least, I recommend putting your images in an images
folder. My assets directory for an advanced site that intends to use a wide variety of medis would look something like this:
assets
audio
music
podcasts
sound
images
animations
icons
illustrations
logos
video
commercials
clips
movies
It’s not always clear cut. Do animated GIF banner ads belong in the images
directory, the animations
directory, or in video/commercials
?
Types of Web Pages
As you code more and more pages, you’ll notice certain patterns emerge in the types of pages that you need.
- Base Page
- Landing Page
- Index Page (Directory, Feed, Glossary, Links)
- Content Pages (Read Only)
- Article Page
- Documentation (Articles/Tutorials)
- About Page
- Profile Page
- Contact Page
- Colophon
- Application Pages
- Generator Page
- Dashboard Page
- Wizard Page
- Search Pages
- Entry
- Results
- Server Response Page
- Not Found (404)
- Server Error (500)
- Redirect (302)
- Login Required (401)
- Authentication Failed (403)
- I’m a Teapot (418)