Before you build your Web site, you may want to consider its organization. While more than likely you have thought of many ways of organizing your Web site’s structure, you have probably thought about it from a navigational perspective. In addition to thinking about it from that angle, I would suggest that you also think about your Web site’s structure from a maintenance point of view. What can you do to make your Web site easier to maintain? What conventions will simplify the structure of your pages?

The result of this early structuring process will help you set a standard to guide your efforts. Now that you have your server up and running, it would be a good opportunity to consider a few of the issues involved. By no means, is this the only approach that you can use. Any thought-out logical system should serve you equally well. Many of the ideas presented here are used at accessLINK, inc., a small Web presence provider where I spend many hours of my day. AccessLINK develops several small- to medium-sized Web sites per week and maintains a few more on a daily basis. This article presents some of the ideas that I use for organizing our work. I will also address some other services, such as automatic support for personal Web pages, that your users will want you to implement.

Organizing your Web site is not about structuring a Web site so that visitors can find their way around. It’s something you do for yourself; it’s your filing mechanism. If you follow a few basic guidelines, the maintenance of your Web site will be much easier. Upgrading to new versions of the software will be a snap, and other administrative chores such as backups will require less time and effort.

A Web server is the server software behind the World Wide Web. It listens for requests from a client, such as a browser like Netscape or Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. When it gets one, it processes that request and returns some data. This data usually takes the form of a formatted page with text and graphics. The browser then renders this data to the best of its ability and presents it to the user. Web servers are in concept very simple programs. They await for requests and fulfill them when received.

Web servers communicate with browsers or other clients using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which is a simple protocol that standardizes the way requests are sent and processed. This allows a variety of clients to communicate with any vendor’s server without compatibility problems.

Most of the documents requested are formatted using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). HTML is a small subset of another markup language called Standard General Markup Language (SGML), which is in wide use by many organizations and the U.S. Government.

Many online services or Internet providers give you several megabytes of storage space so you can put up your own website. Unfortunately, the amount of space available may be too small, or the Internet provider may censor what type of information you can post. For example, online services like America Online tend to frown on anyone using their service to post anti–America Online comments on a website.

If the rules or storage space of your current Internet provider aren’t satisfactory, try one of the many companies that offer free websites. These companies usually don’t care what type of information you post—all they really care about is attracting people to their own website so they can sell ads. Search for "free website" or "free web page" to find a company that offers free websites, or try these:

While children (or even adults) could use email or programs like the Peekabooty software to slip pornography past any Internet filtering software that their parents or company may have installed, the intended purpose for circumventing Internet filters is to visit government-banned websites.

To learn what type of information may threaten certain governments, try looking at the following websites. Who knows? Maybe you’ll find ideas to help you circumvent your own government’s attempts to suppress any information it doesn’t like.