Develop Organizational Habits Early
(this can save you a lot of time and trouble finding files later)
It is important that you are organized from the start of your project(s). What often happens is that as you develop your ideas and project(s) and the information grows, the trail to find that information can become quite complex; in fact, it can become difficult to find things that you need.
If you have not organized your files in a logical manner, you can waste a lot of time searching for the information you need.
It is very important that you organize your files, records, websites, and website components so that you can find them easily.
It may not seem like a problem at the start, but it soon grows. If you have different components in different places on your computer, you will have trouble finding them, which can be time-consuming and devastating if you can’t find something.
Files must be easily found and have a minimum number of clicks to get to them.
Start your organizational habits at the beginning of your project(s). As it grows, you will be able to add sections to your organizational structure and keep control of your files.
Remember, your files are THE most important thing in your project(s). If your files are not organized and easily found, you will be continually at odds with yourself, become frustrated, and suffer from reduced productivity.
In the graphic above, click on the thought button, and it will open. When finished, click on the highest level button, and it will go back a step.
In this example, I have tried to demonstrate how complex a website can become. You will find at the beginning of your project that only a few files will be required. However, if you are going to grow your internet business, you will eventually need to have all of these files and more to deal with. It could grow into hundreds of files.
Let’s get started. Create a folder in your “My Documents” folder and title it “My Websites” or “My Domains” or something that is easy for you to connect with. The wording does not matter so long as it is a word that you will relate to and easily remember. This would be your top-level folder.
Inside that folder, you can find several other folders. For example, one would be your domain, and inside this folder, you've got several other folders; let’s say one could be called “images”, another could be named themes, another plugin’s, another article, passwords and so on. So, for any particular project/website, all of the files associated with that website are gathered together in one place.
Another great reason for doing this is: What would you do if your site was no longer there if you had to re-create it?
What would you need? In other words, your site crashes, or the web hosting service you've had goes belly-up and folds.
What would you need to re-create or reconstruct your site?
What would make it easier for you to recreate that?
Yes, you can create a backup. Don’t forget you still need to put that somewhere, so it needs to go into your backup folder.
In future articles, we will cover the backup of your website, which can be done automatically with software tools.
The above example is just a guide, use it as a template if nothing else.
Every time you get a new domain, build your organization. Don’t get complacent; be disciplined, and make sure that you always follow your structure.
Another example of the benefits of being organized is that when you register a domain name, you need to keep the details of the domain where you can easily find them; what about web hosting? When you purchase your web hosting, you may find that as time goes on, you might have several websites and even different web hosts, and each of them will provide login details and passwords every time you set up a website
So, it is very important to keep track of these details, be organized, and be able to locate information easily when you need it.
There are ways of keeping your login and password information in a locked, separate file; this will be the subject of a future post.
These are just guides. Don’t try to make it perfect from the start; just make it happen.
As they say, “Just do it” and always keep it simple.
As you progress through your business endeavours and you get another idea, then add it to your organization.
The idea is to get you started, and hopefully, some of these tips will help you become efficient with your internet journey.