Renegade — Wed, 06 Nov 2002 08:22:11 +0000

yeah good point hager, i've been down that road b4, now i use sub folders i.e css,js,images....

hagar — Tue, 05 Nov 2002 00:59:25 +0000

i usually use one folder under root for includes, one under root for images, sub folders under includes for back end code, and point everything relative to root then into those folders to obtain my includes, images, javascript, WSH, whathaveyou.

When you have maybe 80+ subfolders just with content and documents in them(Like I often do), one place to aim your links at can help alot, especially if your domain name changes at all. Hardcoded domain links are usually a problem waiting to happen. ../../.. links can be an even bigger pain if your structure ever changes. Best to build around the concept that the site will be massive and use practices that make it easy to maintain, rather then think small, grow, and then weep over poor planning.

my $0.02 worth + Tax;)

Renegade — Tue, 05 Nov 2002 00:58:13 +0000

yeah, i always find that relative is better, and eisier because less typing, faster to load, and lesstyping

jammin — Mon, 04 Nov 2002 22:58:57 +0000

hmm... i have always kept my html files in the main directory, any javascript or css in a subfolder, and another subfolder for images. seems to work for me... but then again it can get fairly cluttered if you have alot of html files.

dk01 — Mon, 04 Nov 2002 22:02:21 +0000

Same with relative to root also rob. I think thats what you mean but just to clarify.
-dk

ROB — Mon, 04 Nov 2002 18:48:54 +0000

also keep in mind that if you use absolute urls you cant move your site without editing every anchor,image and link in every page. it also increases the filesizes, and may (im not sure) cause a dns lookup for every page.

best to use relative urls. then you can just copy your site to anywhere and it will work fine with no modification.

Princess4ubabe — Mon, 04 Nov 2002 16:39:15 +0000

Thanks everyone.
What is .htaccess?

Suzanne — Sat, 02 Nov 2002 03:11:19 +0000

The full url is more work, yes. Relative to root isn't particularly different from relative, other than you have less ../../ to remember. And it works WAY better for CSS to use relative to root urls.

Blocking viewing images outside of the html page is excellent, so is blocking them being loaded from other urls, and you can also use .htaccess to set the index file for any folder, so it could be any file as the one that shows, including a "you cannot view these files" image, or better yet, either a redirect to the right place where they CAN view files, or a page with the site map on it, to help them get where they are going.

Busy — Sat, 02 Nov 2002 02:35:16 +0000

I remember reading ages ago using the full URL is bad for images etc, the server has to go out of your site then back in to get the image, where as using ../ or whatever the server only goes back or forwards within your sites space.
I suppose a few images wouldnt be bad but image intense sites does get slowed down a lil.
Also if people save your source, they can view your site with images off line, so you'd need .htaccess to pervent hot linking.

A good file system like disaster-master mentioned (without the index.html) is a good clean way to set them up, keep the .html files in the main directory, keep all images in a folder called "images" or "graphics" or something, javascript and CSS could go anywhere, don;t usually have many of them and what other files you have left in another folder.

Suzanne — Sat, 02 Nov 2002 02:23:05 +0000

Actually, there are three options:

relative: ../images/whatever.gif
absolute: http://www.domain.com/images/whatever.gif
relative to root: /images/whatever.gif

On most servers, if you use the forward slash first, it means "go to the root and then follow this path", or in this case, go up to domain.com, then go to the images folder and get the whatever.gif.