STEP 7:
Organize Template
You will need to take some steps to organize your template before integrating your content into it:
• Identify a development URL--Determine where you will place your site while it is under development. Consider password-protecting the site to make sure that unauthorized access does not occur. To keep search engines from indexing it, make sure you do not create any links to the development site from any other Web page.
• Decide the file structure--You should plan how you will organize your site on disk. Will all image files be in one directory? Will you keep each organizational unit in its own directory? Refrain from placing all of your files in a single directory; your maintenance will become more difficult as the site grows.
• Use server-side includes (SSI)--Most Web servers allow you to do some type of dynamic including of files into a Web page (e.g., Apache's #include directive). Consider breaking the template into its logical pieces (e.g., header, left navigation, top navigation, etc.) to keep from repeating the same HTML code in each page. Although it involves a slight performance penalty, SSI will make changes to your site or the template easier to propagate.
• Choose your editing tools--The templates are not dependent on any particular piece of editing software, but you should be aware of the various tools that Web masters for your site may use. When editing the template, you may use anything from simple text editors like Notepad to sophisticated generators like FrontPage. However, you need to be extra careful with HTML generators to make sure they do not insert proprietary code into the template that could break compatibility with certain browsers.
For the sake of simplicity and consistency, the following are guidelines for naming files and URLs:
• Do not use spaces or special characters (e.g., @#$^&*) in file names or URLs. Use hyphens or underscores in the place of spaces.
•Be consistent with your use of lower and upper case in filenames. Consider that some Web server operating systems like Unix treat filenames as case sensitive but others like Windows 2000 do not.
• In URLs, shorter is not always better. For example, use http://www.sc.edu/basketweaving/ instead of http://www.sc.edu/bweaving/, but not to http://www.sc.edu/college_of_basketweaving/ .
There is no requirement about having www in the domain name portion of the URL. For example, http://basketweaving.sc.edu/ is preferred to http://www.basketweaving.sc.edu/ .
