Navigating directories on your web-site
=======================================

For simplicity, all files on your web-site, both HTML and images,
can be kept in one single directory;  but if the site is at all
large, it becomes much more logical to spread them over a small
number of directories (and avoids too many files per directory).
You will then have to work out how to refer to different files
(in hyperlinks or image sources) across the directory structure.

Firstly, it's up to you as web-author to remember which files are
in which directories!

If a file you're referring to is in the same (sub)directory as the
page you are writing, then you just use the likes of:
   <A HREF="page2.html">Continued</A>
or the more explicit  <A HREF="./page2.html">Continued</A>
where the "./" means "in the current directory".

If the file you're referring to is inside a directory which is in
the same directory as the current page, use for example:
   <IMG SRC="images/piccy.gif">  or  <IMG SRC="./images/piccy.gif">.
or <A HREF="pages/page2.html">Continued</A>   etc.

If the file you're referring to is in the parent of the directory
containing the page you're writing, use something like:
   <A HREF="../index.html">Back to Home page</A>
where the "../" means "go back up one level".

If the file you're referring to is inside a directory which is
in the parent of the directory containing the page being written,
you'll need to both go up a level and down again, for example
   <IMG SRC="../images/photo.jpeg">



Example of a local directory structure on your hard disk:

                 (site root directory)
                /     |        |      \
               /      |        |       \
              /       |        |        \
    index/html    pages      images     reply/html
                 /    |        |   \
                /     |        |    \
               /      |        |     \
     about/html  more/html  home/gif  photo/jpeg

Note the use of a "slash-extension" in RiscOS/ADFS names above,
but a "dot-extension" in the unix-style names in the HTML below
(and of course, vice versa for (sub-)directory/file separators).

Some example fragments of HTML in those pages:

in "index":
<A HREF="pages/about.html">About me</A><BR>
<A HREF="reply.html">Sign the Visitors' book</A><HR>          [Note 1]
You are visitor number <IMG SRC="/cgi-bin/counttest.bm?code=  [etc: 3]

in "reply":
<A HREF="index.html"><IMG SRC="images/home.gif" ALT="Home Page"></A>

in "about":
<H3>Mugshot</H3><IMG SRC="../images/photo.jpeg><HR>
<A HREF="more.html">More about me</A>                         [Note 2]

in "more":
<A HREF="../index.html"><IMG SRC="../images/home.gif" ALT="Home"></A>


Notes:

[1] or:
<A HREF="./reply.html">Sign the Visitors' book</A>

[2] or:
<A HREF="./more.html">More about me</A>


The prefix "./" means "starting at the current directory", which is
assumed to be the case if no such prefix is given at all;

The prefix "../" (note: TWO dots) means "go back up one level to the 
parent of the current directory";

[3]
the prefix "/" means "starting from the root of the WEB-SERVER"
(NOT the root of your directory), so you won't be using that 
(except perhaps for accessing "cgi-bin").


You can of course have more (deeper) levels of sub-directories, and so
might have to have references such as:
<IMG SRC="../../images/photos/baby.jpeg">



It is a convention that every (sub)directory has an "index.html" file:
this means that a reference to eg "./personal/" will in practice result
in the server actually returning the file "./personal/index.html".

You would probably not want such an index in a directory (eg "icons/")
which just contained icon images;  in this instance, if the visitor
*did* try to access "icons/", the web-server usually automatically
generates a file "icons/index.html" which shows a sort of "Filer
window" of that directory.


                         John Alldred, 15July97 <john@protovale.co.uk>
                    http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/protovale/john.html