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Make sure that your folders and files are structured in a practical way on your PC
We are all different and there are no right or wrong ways of doing things. How you arrange folders and files on your computer is based on one main principle, do it in a way that makes sense to you and facilitates your work. Website projects tend to grow and when starting your first project it's easy to feel that you have everything in place and under control. That might be true as long as you are involved in the process. After you finish the project let's say you don't touch it for a couple of months. In the meantime, for some reason, you maybe needed one or more objects/images included in your project for something else so you renamed or moved it to another location. When you then open your website project you realise that most of your images are missing. There is no reason to panic but some extra work is waiting and in a worst case scenario it can be quite time consuming.
I can't tell you in universal terms what is the best solution for you but by showing an example, using my own way of how to build a structure, I might trigger some ideas how you can do it.
I can't tell you in universal terms what is the best solution for you but by showing an example, using my own way of how to build a structure, I might trigger some ideas how you can do it.
Just double click on any word in the text that you would like explained.
I assume that the general folder structure on your PC is similar to the one in Fig.1 above. It means that you probably have 'My Documents' directory/folder where most of your personal files reside. When installing SiteSpinner or/and SiteSpinner Pro there is a certain directory/folder structure created by default. SS/SSPro creates My IMS Projects/My IMS Pro Projects with three sub-folders (blue folders in Fig. 2).
My Clipart contains all objects used in SS templates and more that come with SiteSpinner.
My Templates contains all templates that come with SiteSpinner.
Mysite is initially empty untill you Publish for the first time.
I keep all my .ims files in the My IMS Projects folder organised in sections that suit my personal needs. You can create sub-folders and arrange your .ims files in a way that suits you.
If you work with only one website project you might as well use the Mysite folder, where all the html pages published to disk will be placed. If you, like me, work with many projects you will need a more detailed structure. In Fig. 3 below you can notice that the published files are gathered and placed in separate folders. By default SiteSpinner creates three Sub Folders when you publish your project: image, geometry and media.My Templates contains all templates that come with SiteSpinner.
Mysite is initially empty untill you Publish for the first time.
I keep all my .ims files in the My IMS Projects folder organised in sections that suit my personal needs. You can create sub-folders and arrange your .ims files in a way that suits you.
Even if publishing your website is covered in SiteSpinner Tutorials I just want to emphasise that it is of utmost importance to have all your resources gathered together into a well organised directory/folder structure. In SiteSpinner Publisher under the 'Pages' tab you need to assign a path to your Local Publish Directory (Folder). In the 'Path Options' section make sure the 'Gather' all files feature is checked and all your resources will be placed in different directories/folders (see Fig. 4 below).
Fig. 5 and Fig. 6 show how I organise my projects. The reason for this approach is that "Gather" does not necessarily gather all your source images. There are occasions where you do not use an image in its original form in your project - instead you re-scale or re-colour it. In both those operations SiteSpinner will "gather" its created images rather than the original image. If you ever had to rebuild your project from the back-up, you would then need to modify your project to use the gathered images rather than the originals. It can be done but is easier if you still have the original images.
I keep my .ims project file and all external files used in that project in one folder (see example Fig. 6 below) and here follows my procedure; In the SS created folder 'Projects' start by creating a folder that you call 'Website 1' (or whatever you like). You can naturally create such a folder wherever it makes sense to you. As a general rule I would recommend creating some sub-folders: Codes, Media, Original Images, PDF/Word Documents (see Fig.6 below). This kind of structure, in my opinion, makes it very easy to work with a project as all files connected with that particular project are always placed in those sub-folders. Even if you haven't been working on a certain project for a while you know where to find all files connected to the project and if you want to make any kind of changes you know there is only one place where you have to look for it. This is the structure I create for all my websites and that kind of consistency makes it very comfortable to work with the different projects as the structure is always familiar.
Another issue of extreme importance is to regularly make back-ups of your projects. I make usually two backups. One on a mobile device like flash stick and another on my HD (see Fig. 7). Making that a habit might save you many hours of extra work and hair-pulling experiences.
Make a documentation when building the website and keep a track record of your changes
The eagerness of getting things done as fast as possible in a first place can result in a future nightmare. Even if you are the only person handling the maintenance of a website it's very easy to forget what you have done in a first place. If you in addition need to let somebody else handle the maintenance, the task for that person might become almost impossible, espacially if the project is big.
There are many different ways to make a documantation and those can be very extensive but I would like to focus only on the a few simple aspects that might make the maintenance of the website easier.
First of all decide on what format you would like to use for your documentation. Some people prefer to write down everything in a Word document. Personally I like to use a spreadsheet program like Excel for my documentation. As an example what I try to keep the track of is the use of external codes (e.g. java scripts) with a short explanation why they are there. Some of the codes are placed on a certain page only temporarly. An example of such a code is 'Falling snow' script added to a site during a Winter season that for obvious reasons shouldn't be there in the Summer. It's difficult to say what you might need to document, as it depends on the content of your website but one criteria I use to define that is what elements of my content will need more or less regular changes.
There are many different ways to make a documantation and those can be very extensive but I would like to focus only on the a few simple aspects that might make the maintenance of the website easier.
First of all decide on what format you would like to use for your documentation. Some people prefer to write down everything in a Word document. Personally I like to use a spreadsheet program like Excel for my documentation. As an example what I try to keep the track of is the use of external codes (e.g. java scripts) with a short explanation why they are there. Some of the codes are placed on a certain page only temporarly. An example of such a code is 'Falling snow' script added to a site during a Winter season that for obvious reasons shouldn't be there in the Summer. It's difficult to say what you might need to document, as it depends on the content of your website but one criteria I use to define that is what elements of my content will need more or less regular changes.
Name the objects in your project
If you have only few objects on your website it's easy to find them. As the project is growing you add new objects all the time, sometimes create permanent groups etc and in the end you have a list containing a considerable amount of objects called obj218 or obj2112. Even if you created it the task of finding the element you want to change can be very tedious. Giving the objects meaningful names might feel like something slowing you down but in the long run it's actually going to speed you up.
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