You are undoubtedly familiar with “Explorer” on Windows or the “Finder” on the Mac. These programs allow you to view the contents of your hard drive. Your hard drive contains folders, and most folders have other folders inside them. This is the way you organize your files so you can find a file on your computer when you need to access it.

When you begin building a website, you will want to organize your files and folders in a similar fashion. Start with a home page (index.html) in your home directory, and create folders inside this directory to store your content pages.

Here are some good tips for organizing your files and folders:

  1. Organize files and folders in a logical manner. A good place to start is thinking about how many main links you want on your home page. It depends on your content, but you probably want at least four and probably 12 at the very most. These topics would be good candidates for folder names inside you website.
  2. You can create additional folders inside the folders you already created. This is the best way to keep large websites organized.
  3. When creating folders inside of folders, follow a logical progression of the type of information contained in each. Typically, work from general concepts –> general topics –> specific topics –> specific details.
  4. Avoid redundant use of words in your folders and filenames. Consider these two examples:

BAD: fall99/classes/fall-classes.html


Your folder and file names become the web addresses for your pages. Make them easy to say, easy to write down, and easy to remember.