Site structure for COMS 326 directories

To start organizing your work for this course, create six directories ("folders") in your H-drive's public_html folder. Your "H-drive" space should already include the public_html folder. Never delete or rename it!

Eventually you will make an index.html file for each folder.

Your personal home page: The index.html page in your main public_html folder is viewable by the world as your personal home page (www.radford.edu/~yourname). That page isn't part of this course, but if someone knows your e-mail address and knows you are studying the Web, they may go there looking for samples of your work.

I do recommend that you have some kind of page at that address. In addition to "advertising yourself," it's good Web housekeeping to have something there to block visitors' view of your files and directory structure.

Possible home page contents: Your name and links to your Facebook page, other home page, any course projects that you might want friends, strangers or future employers to see, etc. It could be a portfolio of your work, with links to your resume and your best work samples. Or you could put a "refesh" code in that index.html to automatically send visitors to your blog or Facebook page.

Recommendation: Whether it's a /~yourname page, a blog or Facebook, do NOT include the beer pong, beach party or bong pix, or anything you don't want mom, dad, a future spouse or a future employer to see. Keep those shots in your wallet and only show people you trust.

Folders for this course

To hold all your work for this course, create a folder inside your public_html space, and name it "coms326" (without the quote marks).

Important: All of your pages should link to each other with "relative" links so that when you leave RU, you can pick up the contents of your public_html folder or any individual course or project folder and put it on your own server (or your grad school's server) as a personal archive.
Examples:
http://stepno.com

http://stepno.com/unc (pages made while at UNC Chapel Hill)

http://stepno.com/emerson (pages made while at Emerson College)

Site structure

/public_html/coms326
/public_html/coms326/images -- for pictures or graphics that you use on many pages
/public_html/coms326/sandbox -- a space to play in and experiment 
/public_html/coms326/exercises -- a space for classroom exercises
/public_html/coms326/reviews -- a space for the weekly components of the midterm project
/public_html/coms326/reviews/images -- a space for pictures as part of the midterm project 
/public_html/coms326/project -- a space for the final project (with subfolders, as needed)

/public_html/coms326/docs -- for copies of downloaded PDF or DOC files, cheat sheets, class notes, etc.

If a directory does not have its own "front page" content, it should have a blank or "refresh" index.html page sending visitors back to your home page. Many developers use "images" folders to keep pictures or graphics organized. Some sites put all images in one folder in the home directory, but I prefer project-specific image locations for simpler coding. On a small project, there's nothing wrong with having images and html files in the same folder, but it's good to make "being organized" a habit. Use simple lower-case filenames that are just long enough to remind you of their contents.

For instance, this is what a directory for the midterm site-review project might look like:

/public_html/coms326/reviews/index.html -- the home page for the review project 

/public_html/coms326/reviews/review.css -- a stylesheet all pages have in common 
/public_html/coms326/reviews/uncray.html -- first review
/public_html/coms326/reviews/nytpoet.html -- etc.
/public_html/coms326/reviews/rsband.html
/public_html/coms326/reviews/brmuse.html
/public_html/coms326/reviews/floyd.html

/public_html/coms326/reviews/images/ -- a folder to put images in (if wanted)
/public_html/coms326/reviews/images/ray1-front.jpg -- image for first review
/public_html/coms326/reviews/images/ray2-menu.jpg -- image for first review (etc.)
 public_html/coms326/reviews/images/floydbanjo.mov -- video clip for last review 
/public_html/coms326/reviews/images/boblogo.jpg -- a "branding" pic for home or all pages

When you use smaller versions of the images on your index page, you may want to store them as "thumbnails" with related names; for instance, here I've added "th" for "thumbnail" to each filename:

/public_html/coms326/reviews/images/ray-th.jpg

/public_html/coms326/reviews/images/floyd-th.jpg

Multimedia Site Review Assignment for COMS 326