Website files and organizaiton.
What is a website made of?
Before we start getting into the details of connecting to or creating your website I think it’s good we go over exactly what a website consists of. What are the pieces that make it work. Having a good understanding of the construction of a website will make the rest of the process that much easier.
At its most basic level a website is just a collection of files that work together to create what you see on the Internet. These files consist of the individual pages you pull up in your web browser one at a time as well as any images that may get placed on these pages to make the site more visually appealing.
Below is an example of the structure of a very basic website and the files involved to make it work:
This simple site contains 3 folders (audio, cgi-bin, and images) which will hold other files as well as 5 website pages which are displayed in your web browser. This example site was created with the idea of setting up and organizing a family reunion. The pages have been given names to help describe their function:
- contact_us.html (Information how to contact others to help organize the event.)
- directions.html (Directions to drive to the location where the reunion is taking place.)
- index.html (This is a special name given to the “home page” of your website. More on this later.)
- photos.html (A page setup to display pictures of family members before and after the reunion.)
- reunion.html (Details about the reunion - where it’s taking place, what to bring, how to dress.)
The reason to have the 3 folders is just to help organize all the files used to make the website so they are easier to manage. Your site may have 40 or 50 pictures once you are finished, keeping them in a single folder called images helps to make things easier to work with as you build and update the website.
The folder called “cgi-bin” is one that may be created automatically by the company you get to host your website. There are “cgi scripts” (basically programs) that you can use to help your website do special things. In this example the web page “contact_us.html” has a way for someone to fill in a few boxes on that page and send an email directly from the website. This is called an email form.
The email form on that page uses a cgi program that is located in the folder called “cgi-bin” to make this email function work from the website.
Finally, what is the “index.html” page about? As I mentioned, this is your websites home page, the first page to come up when someone enters your domain name in the address bar of their web browser. Since they only entered the domain name and you have many different pages there has to be a way to determine what page is the first one to show.
This is done by making sure to call your home page a specific name that has been pre-set by the website hosting server. The most common name to use is “index.html” but there are other names that you may be able to use on the server your website is running on. Some examples are listed below:
- index.htm
- home.html
- welcome.html
It’s best to make sure you know what page names you can use before you build your entire website and find out you may have to change the name of your file. This can be a problem because every other page of your website may have a link back to your home page. If you change the name of that home page, each of those links would have to be adjusted as well so they work correctly.
I just got my new microphone delivered so I will soon be able to start creating some videos where I record what I’m doing on the screen and be able to narrate over the video to help make some things easier to understand. I am also going to start using some other programs that are used in connecting to and creating a website so I’m going to look for goos programs you can use and see if I can find the best prices if you wish to buy them to work on your site.
**Jim.
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