Web Guidelines: MIT Libraries

Directory Structure

• Keep your directories well-organized.

• Organize the directories on your local computer in the same way the web directories are organized on the server. (Dreamweaver likes this!) Use the "define site" feature of Dreamweaver to tell it where the root level of the web site is on your machine.

• Plan for growth.

• Create a README file in a directory to explain how you are organizing it to those who come after you.

Guides directories

In order to take advantage of the Templates feature of Dreamweaver, we have moved all "guides" pages out of individual library directories (where they were in our old site) and placed them in a central directory called "guides." This will also help for those cases where the subject crosses the boundaries of one library, or changes ownership across libraries -- Barker to Science, for example.

The structure is this:

guides/subjects
guides/courses
guides/types
guides/cheatsheets

Within each directory there is a sub-directory for each set of pages. For example:

guides/subjects/art
guides/subjects/architecture
etc.

guides/courses/fall2001/1.05
guides/courses/spring2003/15.968
guides/courses/summer2002/2.009
etc.

Individual library directories

Many libraries (Barker, for example) have no need for sub-directories within their directory, since they don't have many pages. It's OK to have a directory full of single pages that belong to one site.

Some libraries have several groups of pages or "sub-sites" within their site. In that case it's good to organize pages into sub-directories. (Music, for example). If you do that, create a text file called README and put it in the root level of your directory. Use it to explain how you have organized the site. Here is the one for the Music library, for example: http://libraries.mit.edu/music/README