How do you organize your files?

PHP
1

How do you organize your files for your website??

I’m doing basic procedural programming. (No fancy OOP or MVC stuff, so no show-offs!!)

Also, I am trying to put as much stuff into a MySQL database as possible.

Even with that, there are a lot of “one-off” files that are mucking up my Document Root.

For example, I have…

[INDENT]


index.php
log_in.php
create_account.php
workshops.php
my_account.php
contact_us.php

[/INDENT]…and so on.

Questions:
1.) Should I file away those odd, “one-off” files into new directories (e.g. “account”, “help”, “Admin”)?

2.) Should I leave them in the Document Root?

3.) Should they somehow go into my database?

4.) Other?

My website will be content-heavy, so a lot of things will fit into my database (e.g. Articles, Case Studies, Interviews, How-To’s). However, it is becoming obvious that there are a lot of other web pages that don’t have a good “home” currently.

How do MEGA-sites like SitePoint, Yahoo, CNN, etc do things?

Thanks,

Debbie

2

You’ll find there is no right or wrong way to organise your files as it also depends on the size (total number of all files) of your website.

For “small” websites I put all the web pages (php, html etc) in the root directory . I then have sub directories called lib (for javascript files), images (for image files), stylesheets (for stylesheets). Under the lib directory I have a directory called includes for php include files and a directory called classes for php class files.

For larger websites I will have additional directories and sub-directories to suit.

3

First of all I would like to ask you why not OOP and MVC? They make the (programming) life much much easier as far as I know. But if you are still go for this normal structural programming and want to manage the files, then see how I would go for:
Document Root - all the PHP/HTML files that are accessed from URL (browser’s address bar) i.e. index.php, about.php, etc.
include - all the including files like header.php, footer.php, left.php (which are included in the main files index.php, about.php, contact.php)
js - all the javascript files
images - all the images
css - all css files
library - all the PHP files that are not directly accessed from browser but included instead i.e. functions.php. Also all the third party codes/classes i.e. fpdf, phpmailer, etc.
library/classes - all the classes that you developed if you have any (just to segregate from other include files.

I don’t say best one but would cover and show the difference of the files :wink:

4

Because I have never been able to understand OOP and MVC to the point where I would feel comfortable building a real website using them. (Any idiot on the Internet can write OOP and MVC, but in my experience 95% of those people haven’t a clue what they are doing… I choose to use a simpler, more traditional approach until I can do the newer methods the correct way…) :wink:

But if you are still go for this normal structural programming and want to manage the files, then see how I would go for:
Document Root - all the PHP/HTML files that are accessed from URL (browser’s address bar) i.e. index.php, about.php, etc.
include - all the including files like header.php, footer.php, left.php (which are included in the main files index.php, about.php, contact.php)
js - all the javascript files
images - all the images
css - all css files
library - all the PHP files that are not directly accessed from browser but included instead i.e. functions.php. Also all the third party codes/classes i.e. fpdf, phpmailer, etc.
library/classes - all the classes that you developed if you have any (just to segregate from other include files.

I don’t say best one but would cover and show the difference of the files :wink:

I am basically doing what you suggest now. If I add additional folders by “functional grouping” (e.g. myaccount, help, workshops, etc) am I helping or hurting things?

It just seems like as my website grows, that if I have everything “that you can access from the URL” (as you say) I could still easily have dozens - if not hundreds - of files in my Document Root?! :blush:

On a related note, what do mega-sites like CNN, USAToday, Yahoo, etc do to manage files? (They certainly would have to expand your approach?!)

Do they put every webpage into a database?

Thanks,

Debbie

5

Though I cannot guarantee what they have done exactly because I have never been a developer of CNN, Yahoo, etc. yet :stuck_out_tongue: But I am almost sure that they manage all the contents (or webpage in your word) in database. I don’t think that there will be problem on keeping the more than 100 files in the document but if you are flexible calling them then that’s indeed not a bad idea to categorize the files and keep them in different folders but it will increase the rules to be written for rewriting the URLs if you want later on.