About Sub-Directories Sub-Domains
The default page, the page that gets loaded when someone visits your site is the page (if it exists) called index.html in the root directory of your website.
This can vary but this is the most common situation. It is the default page in a Unix system, which is the most common hosting environment on the Internet.
Other browser/server
combinations may work together and list off the priorities of a page title as
follows:
default.htm, then default.html, then index.htm, then
index.html, then home.htm and finally home.html. If more than
one of these files exist, the browser will load the first one found from left to
right and ignore the others to the right of it.
You can figure it out for your situation, if you are having problems by just setting up the 6 pages named as above and see which one is loaded. Just make it a blank page with the name appearing as text.
Directories or Folders
The name directory is an older term but still used. Folders is a newer term which is being used more because it seems to be more easily understood. They are the same thing.
The root directory/folder is the topmost or outside directory/folder. It is the one that contains all the other directories.
You will be able to see this directory structure when using and FTP program to view/change, upload/download pages from your site.
I have used (or tried to use) quite a few FTP programs. If you don’t have one yet, the one I like the best is SmartFTP. Download it free at http://www.smartftp.com/
Knowing how this works allows you to shorten a link to a webpage. If you link to the page itself, you have to put the name and the extension (the .html or .htm). But if you make a directory called Articles. So you place a page in the Articles directory and name it index.html. Now this link will take someone there: http://mysite/Articles
By having this index.html page really be an index for the articles that are in the directory. On the page you give the Title and a short description of the article and make a hyperlink to the webpage that contains the article.
This also helps you organize your site by keeping all article webpages in this directory.
Of course you might further organize by making directories inside Articles such as Tutorials, Software, Free Content or whatever. Now you can link someone to your article on Free Software with this: http://mysite/Articles/Software/Free
This will allow you to send someone to the exact page within your site. Much better than to just send them to your homepage (index.html) and then make them look for Articles, click that, wait for that page to load, click software, wait for that page to load, click Free, and wait again.
Remember surfers are impatient, make them go through all that and you will lose them.
So you see that directories or folders are the same as directories or folders on your computer. There are slashes on the website and backslashes on your computer separating them.
Sub Domains
Actually the www that you type into many sites that you visit is actually a Sub Domain. What usually follows the www. is really the domain name all the way thru the .com or .net or .org or one of the new ones like .tv or .ws.
When I setup a hosting account for a customer, I can set the account to be reached when the www. IS included or I can set it so that if someone types www. it will NOT respond.
Whether or not you can setup SUBDOMAINS and how many depends on the hosting account. Most allow it now. One way you might want to set up a site with sub-domains is where you have a family site. That is, where you were lucky enough to get a domain name in the name of your family’s last name. You do it like this.
Domain name: wilson.com
My subdomain: john.wilson.com
Fathers subdomain: aaron.wilson.com
Mothers subdomain: hattie.wilson.com
One domain registration to pay, one hosting account to pay.
Check to see if yours is available here:
Companies make use of subdomains like this:
Sales.Microsoft.com
Support.Microsoft.com
More about this at:
http://dollarware.us/html-starter-pages/