How deep is your directory structure?

[MadDog]

As I expand the focus of what I'm doing with my sites, things can become a bit of a mess with everything all shoved together.

I know it sucks to have to fix stuff later, but I like the idea of keeping stuff nicely separated.

How many directories deep do your sites go? How many files are you comfortable with in a single folder? How much do .htaccess issues force the structure of your site(s)?

[TAFlorian]

I use loads of subdirectories, it's sometimes a pain in the ass, cause the lazy "throw everything in one directory" approach is often easier short term...but long term you get loads of problems when you don't find what you are looking for, at least that's my experience. My brain is no harddrive, I often can't remember where I did upload something, so a clear structure helps alot.

[traffictrader]

i was once redisigning a guys site, and he had a sub directory for every single image, i ki you not, on his site. it was arounda thousand folders, most of which buried in other folders. Probably the messiest nightmare I've ever seen.

[MadDog]

Originally posted by TAFlorian
I use loads of subdirectories, it's sometimes a pain in the ass, cause the lazy "throw everything in one directory" approach is often easier short term...but long term you get loads of problems when you don't find what you are looking for, at least that's my experience. My brain is no harddrive, I often can't remember where I did upload something, so a clear structure helps alot.

Thanks.

It's good to hear that my instinct isn't totally stupid, but I've had advice to keep the structure very flat. I just don't like the idea of hundreds of HTML files in one directory unless they are all basically the same, like varied TGP pages for a period of time. Concerns about preventing hotlinking of photos while allowing access to HTML are making me rethink things.

I think I will go two or three deep and try to keep it to that, and then see how horrible things are in six months!

[fnet]

Originally posted by MadDog

How many directories deep do your sites go? How many files are you comfortable with in a single folder? How much do .htaccess issues force the structure of your site(s)?

At what point is a directory crowded? 10-20 files? 40?

I think in terms of 20^n, if n is 3 then you have ~8000 files, 4 you have ~160,000, etc... if your directory structure is much less efficient than that, you may want to abandon the current structure and draw trees on paper.

[Jeremiad]

I like to stay organized so that I can find my stuff. I break everything down by any means that I may need to access it by way of a database later on. It can get large after a while (my content structure has over 2500 directories), but laid out properly, I can find whatever I'm looking for quickly and easily. My trees are usually only three directories deep, but can have hundreds of directories in each. Thus, I keep track of everything with a database, and finding what I need is quick and easy.

Jere