Beginner's Guide To Websites

What are Websites?

A website is a collection of (usually) related documents and media stored on the same server. A website can contain any number of webpages. Maintaining a website that contains many webpages (even hundreds) is very difficult without the correct tools. Fortunately, HotDog comes with the latest arsenal of website maintenance tools.

You have to create all the documents that form part of your website. The first question to ask is where you are going to store them. Some forethought will help immensely as your website grows larger.

For example, say you are creating a website with three themes: About Yourself, Art and Literature. You might have the following webpage files for each theme:

 

Welcome Page	About Yourself	About Art	About Literature
index.HTML	About_Me.HTML	AirBrush_Art.HTML	Borges.HTML
	My_Job.HTML	Oils.HTML	Lovecraft.HTML
	My_Interests.HTML	WaterColors.HTML	Cervantes.HTML

A recommended directory structure you could use on your server is shown below:

Here is where your files are stored:

Directory	Filename
root* root/me root/me root/me root/art root/art root/art root/lit root/lit root/lit	index.HTML About_Me.HTML My_Job.HTML My_Interests.HTML AirBrush_Art.HTML Oils.HTML WaterColors.HTML Borges.HTML Lovecraft.HTML Cervantes.HTML	What is the ‘root’ directory? All HTML files on a server, if they are to be seen by others on the Internet, must be stored in or under a special directory. This directory is usually named www or public_html. However, it can have any name and your ISP will have to tell you what it is. In the example shown left , this special directory is called root.

The advantages of the above directory structure are:

• Organization.

You can pretty much guess immediately which file will be stored in what directory. Imagine if your website had over 2000 files, stored all over the place.

• Expandability.

If you ever wanted to add more themes, or expand upon a current one, it is easy for you to do so.

Mirroring Your website

A key element to website maintenance is having two complete copies of your website. The server copy is what people view on the Internet. Use the local copy of your website (i.e., the copy of your website actually on your hard drive) to make to modifications and improvements. This technique of having two copies of your website is known as mirroring. It is important to duplicate the directory structure of the server as well. For example, the directory structure of your local copy of the website could look as follows:

C:\Program Files\Sausage\HotDog6\HTMLFiles\index.HTML

C:\Program Files\Sausage\HotDog6\HTMLFiles\me\About_Me.HTML

C:\Program Files\Sausage\HotDog6\HTMLFiles\me\My_Job.HTML

C:\Program Files\Sausage\HotDog6\HTMLFiles\me\My_Interests.HTML

C:\Program Files\Sausage\HotDog6\HTMLFiles\art\AirBrush_Art.HTML

C:\Program Files\Sausage\HotDog6\HTMLFiles\art\Oils.HTML

C:\Program Files\Sausage\HotDog6\HTMLFiles\art\WaterColors.HTML

C:\Program Files\Sausage\HotDog6\HTMLFiles\lit\Borges.HTML

C:\Program Files\Sausage\HotDog6\HTMLFiles\lit\Lovecraft.HTML

C:\Program Files\Sausage\HotDog6\HTMLFiles\lit\Cervantes.HTML

In this case, you would define the Base Directory of your HotDog website as:

C:\Program Files\Sausage\HotDog6\HTMLFiles\

(Base Directories are discussed below)

Keeping two copies of your website (one on your local machine and the other on the server) lets you think of website-wide operations instead of just document operations. This is very important when you are dealing with many documents.

For example, say you have changed five webpages in the local copy of your website, and you want to upload these updated files. If you don’t have a local copy of your website then you will have to remember the name of each and every file you need to upload, as well as the precise directory to which they should be uploaded. However, if you have a complete local copy of your website then, to upload your changes, all you need do is tell HotDog to only upload documents that have been changed. HotDog then takes care of all the details.

Having a complete local copy of your website gives you other advantages as well. For example, you can perform website-wide find-and-replaces; apply changes to the body tag of all HTML pages in your website and more.

What is the Base Directory?

To create a HotDog website you have to tell HotDog where the local copy of your website is to be found. In the example above, your website is stored in the C:\Program Files\Sausage\HotDog6\HTMLFiles\ directory. That is, all the files that form part of your website are inside, or in directories that are under, the HTMLFiles directory.

See Also:

Websites Manager Resource Panel (Where all website functionality is stored).

Advanced Websites Tutorial.