Even a small site can consist of dozens of different files - different static web pages, script files, images, downloadable files and more.

I have many sites which have over 100 pages each and probably another 200-300 other files making up discussion forums, graphics and more.

That’s a lot of files to keep organized so I decided to put together some simple ideas for you, to make a few commonsense suggestions on keeping your files neatly arranged before you get started with your small business web hosting account.

A good way to start is to separate all the files that make up your website into a number of different folders.

One popular plan with small business web hosting is to put all your images into one folder (called “graphics” or “images” or suchlike), a different folder for each script you opt to use and so on.

Your static text web pages can then be just uploaded to the root directory (the main public_html folder) on your web hosting account or if you have quite a few consider separating them further into categories of just a small number of pages each, then set up a different folder to house each category of web pages.

So if you were creating a consumer electronics site, as an example, and had a number of pages on DVD players, another collection on computers, and another on camcorders, rather than lumping them all together you could separate them out so that, for example, your camcorder section was found in the camcorders folder on your web hosting account at www.something.com/camcorders/.

Heck, you might even want to do a few pages on web hosting, just as I have on this site

This is not only ideal for the search engines, it makes life easier for your visitors and lastly means you can keep your individual files neatly arranged so you can easier find the files you’re looking for.

Once last useful tip is to try and maintain the same arrangement of files and folders on your home computer as your web hosting account.

So create a folder on your home computer to build your website in, then add extra subfolders for all the various types and categories of files you will be creating or modifying to make up your website.

That way when it comes to uploading your web page files to your small business web hosting account you don’t need to mess around trying to remember which pages should go where on your server and furthermore you can be sure that if the structure is kept the same between the two that all the navigation links should work as well on your web hosting account and on your home computer.