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Subject:Re: Web site file structure From:"Jeanne A. E. DeVoto" <jaed -at- jaedworks -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 8 Dec 1999 12:17:37 -0800
At 10:50 AM -0800 12/8/99, Barbara Stuhlemmer wrote:
>Can anyone provide some insight in to the best way to configure the file
>structure of a web site? We currently have a lot of small files in a few
>large
>directories. The concern is that the file structure may inhibit the
>performance of the server and reduce the usability of the web site.
Ask your system administrator. The number of files you can have in a
directory without performance degradation is intimately dependent on the
hardware and the operating system as well as on a number of parameters of
the system setup. The admin will be the one person who's in the best
position to advise you about this; there's no one answer or guide that will
help in the absence of this highly specific knowledge of your installation.
These server-capacity questions are apart from the question of whether your
current setup works conceptually for the web developer(s). Usually, if the
content is chunked in a reasonable way that makes for easy maintainability,
the number of files in a directory won't even begin to approach the number
that would begin to bog down a server. (But of course there are exceptions
to this.)
Remember too that the "file" part of a URL doesn't necessarily have to
correspond to a file in a filesystem. It could correspond to a record in a
database, for instance, if you go to a database-backed site at some point
in the future.
--
jeanne a. e. devoto ~ jaed -at- jaedworks -dot- com http://www.jaedworks.com
Morning people may be respected, but night people are feared.