I've always just had my htmls all together but i've noticed some people arrange htmls much like you would catergorize pictures into folders like all the video htmls in a 'videos' folder within the main etc Does anyone know if doing this affects SEO in anyway and whether it's worth doing it?
SEO wise it makes no difference, it is more about organization. Personally I like to use the following organizational techniques for flat html sites \ - html and css \scripts - javascript \images - images (duh) \images\theme - images that are presentational \video - videos etc, etc. By keeping the html and css in one directory it's actually SIMPLER to maintain because you don't need negative paths. A lot of time I see people putting each HTML file in it's own directory and going ../../ in their paths or worse, absolute links. It's a waste filesize-wise and from a programmers point of view akin to what we used to call 'spagetti code' For php like the CMS I write, I use this layout. \ - index.php through which ALL pages are routed, settings.php for the mysql password data and setup info. \sources - any routines that touch the database or local files go here, these .php files do NOT output anything instead calling functions from: \themes\themename - allows multiple themes to be installed at once. These .php files ONLY output HTML and do not touch the databases or other files. The various .css also goes here. \themes\themename\images - presentational images unique to the theme. \images - content images that would be the same no matter what theme is in use. Now, a cute thing about this layout is because presentational images should ALWAYS go in the css, the path to the css means the path to the images can be "images\file.png" to pull up the presentational ones - and because you are always calling the same index.php for all pages in the root and content images should always be IMG tags, the path to those images ALSO remains "images\file.png" - it forces me to separate my presentation from my content image-wise. It's all about organization.
Yeh me to, I think it's best to keep all HTML / css together, and easier. I really don't think there's a need to organise specific htmls.
if it's a simple website with few html pages than it won't be a bad idea just putting the pages in the same directory, but preferring to arrange for directories for every type of scripts as jon2k6 said would be the best idea.
I actually put my stylesheets (screen, print, and so forth) into a separate folder. But I'm weird like that.
I like to do it by extension /css for css.. /js for js.. /pdf for pdf.. or sometimes /files /htc for htc.. I rarely store images in just /images /images/inset for inset images /images/layout/ for all graphics/background images /images/headers for all my headers /images/icons for my icons /images/nav for my nav items
See, to me if you have enough images to do that, you've probably got too many images in your layout... but then I do make aggressive use of image reduction so that multiple icons would be stored in one file and 'slid' into place, headers are HTML text over a dynamic 'multi-corner' graphic split into one or two files, etc, etc. (again I'm NOT talking about changing the page appearance, I'm talking techniques to make the same appearance with less files) Hell, I'm rewriting the most image-intensive site I've ever made for a client at the moment using image reduction techniques, and I've got the 'new version' down to 57k of images in ten files from 90k in 52 files... The number of files used alone results in a 50% reduction in load times for broadband users thanks to ping/handshaking... It's a good question to always ask is "Is this worth a separate file" as quite often you can REALLY reduce things down... a good rule of thumb is if your non-presentational images are more than 20 separate files, you are probably doing something wrong... Especially since on high ping cable internet or dialup the handshaking for files ALONE could equal a second per file - or that Firefox is slow as molassas in that department it could even be worse.