File Structure and page flow

The file structure of my Parish Council website (and also this site) is the same on the local computer and on the webserver.

Shown above is an early screenshot of the BWPC (Belchamp Walter Parish Council) website. The files and directories are ALL that is needed to preview the website on the local computer. Simply double-clicking on the file index.html will load the website into the web browser on your computer. This will work on a Wimdows, Apple or a computer running Linux or Chrome.

The big advantage of this technique is that you don't need to make a backup of the files that you have uploaded to the host server. For example, Essexinfo do not provide this facility - something that you will have to bear in mind before the 31st March 2020. All the files that have been uploaded to Essexinfo will have to be downloaded (saved to your computer) by that date unless you have copies of all the originals.

Uploading content

I use FileZilla as an ftp agent. You can use any ftp tool depending on your preferrence

The use of a Template html file

You can see a file named "_template.html" in the "Simple website structure" displayed above. If you follow my method you will need to develop one of your own. The template has all the elements that are commmon to all the pages on your website. You can change this at any time should you decide that there is something that you need to add to pages, however, you will have to edit existing pages.

The use of a template is a slight disadvantage over a CMS solution as pages are created individually. However, the "look and feel" of the pages is mainly determined by the css file (Cascaded Style Sheet). The css file can be modified and this will change ALL the pages on the website. This is ADVANCED web design.