directory structure

I have a site several directory levels down, does everything go in templatedata? for example if one data type "pr" was a directory that held the data dir, presentation dir, html dir (would contain static pages not needing template functionality), images and sublevel dir (with the sublevel dir also containing a data, presentation, html, and images directories) is this the correct way to do set up the directory structure?

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tvaughan

What has worked for me is creating a division of content and template directories at the top most level.

For example, let's say you had a directory structure like this:


/index.html
/images/image1.gif
/news/story1.html
/javascript/menu.js

And you wanted to import it into TeamSite and maybe create a template for your news stories. You may want to consider a directory structure like this:


branch/WORKAREA/user/content
                            /index.html
                            /images/image1.gif
                            /news/story1.html
                            /javascript/menu.js
branch/WORKAREA/user/templatedata
                                 /major
                                       /minor
                                            /datacapture.cfg
                                            /data/
                                                 XML DCR Files
                                            /presentation/
                                                 TEMPLATES

The benefits of this structure are that you explicitly distinguish between your content and you means of creating content. It allows you to more easily move chunks of content from one branch to another, because you don't have to worry about xml files and templates that shouldn't be migrated. . . all you do is tar up the content directory. Users also sometimes find it easier to understand what is going on when you present this structure to them.

Some drawbacks of this approach, however, are that it adds another level of directories that users need to cilck through. Also, if you allow users to browse for images within a template, you have to strip off the leading "content" directory that shows up in the path.

Good luck,
Tom

Gregg Faus

Yes, I think it is a good idea to make a clear distinct between your actual web content and your templatedata. Just as tvaughan noted. Not only is it helpful for you templating files, but also any supplemental material such as sql, documentation, etc... I've set up our directory structure similar to the following:

/web/  (content)
/templatedata/
/docs/ (for specs, nav charts, etc)
/sql/ (build scripts for DB)

This structure works well for our company.

-gf

nico

Tom,

Thanks your response was extremely helpful. My follow up question would pertain to your example specifically when there are sub-directories within "minor". So we assume "minor" contains /datacapture.cfg
/data/
XML DCR Files
/presentation/
TEMPLATES

What do you do if there are sub levels something like this?
/datacapture.cfg
/data/
XML DCR Files
/presentation/
TEMPLATES
/sub_directory

("sub_directory" Will contain Data dir, Presentation dir, datacapture.cfg)

And if it goes deeper ie within "sub_directory" would it simply continue that way?

Cheers,
Nico

tvaughan

Hi NIco,

Sorry I took a while to get back to you (July 4th break!)

Anyway, let me repeat your question to see if I understand you. You are asking that if you have a directory structure like this:


branch/WORKAREA/user/templates/
                              major/
                                    minor/
                                           datacapture.cfg
                                           data/
                                           presentation/

You're asking "What would happen if you wanted to created a heirarchy of subdirectories within that structure?"

Unfortunately, within the "templates" directory, we are constrained by TeamSite's limitation of a 2-deep hierarchy for use in storing templates. What I call "major" and "minor" are referred to in Interwoven documentation as "template category" and "template type". You cannot have any additional heirarchy beneath that which can be recognized by Interwoven's template engine. You can, however, have subdirectories to break up your XML data into manageable chunks.

For example, this is a valid directory structure:


branch/WORKAREA/user/templates/
                              news/              (a.k.a. "major" or "category")
                                    dailynews/               (a.k.a. "minor #1" or "category #1")
                                           datacapture.cfg
                                           data/
                                           presentation/
                                    weeklynews/            (a.k.a. "minor #2" or "category #2")
                                           datacapture.cfg
                                           data/
                                           presentation/

You can also have a directory structure like this, for use in breaking up your XML into manageable directories. In this example, you can use the news->dailynews template to create Data Capture Records (XML) that you can store in one of your data/FY____ directories.


branch/WORKAREA/user/templates/
                              news/              (a.k.a. "major" or "category")
                                    dailynews/               (a.k.a. "minor #1" or "category #1")
                                           datacapture.cfg
                                           data/
                                                FY2002/
                                                FY2001/
                                                FY2000/
                                                FY1999/
                                           presentation/
                                    weeklynews/            (a.k.a. "minor #2" or "category #2")
                                           datacapture.cfg
                                           data/
                                           presentation/

What you can't do, however, is create subdirectories beneath your presentation directory or entirely new sub directories under an existing "minor" (a.k.a. "type") directory. Thus, this structure would be illegal:


branch/WORKAREA/user/templates/
                              news/              
                                    dailynews/ 
                                           datacapture.cfg
                                           data/
                                           presentation/              
                                           illegal_dir/
                                                    datacapture.cfg
                                                    data/
                                                    presentation/

Based on the templating.dtd that Interwoven ships with, if you had any presentation templates or datacapture.cfg file underneath the "illegal_dir" in the above example, it would never show up when you clicked "File->New Data Record"

Interwoven is kind of limited in that way, but this has the silver lining of really forcing you to think about how you want your content to be organized.

Hope this helps,

Tom

nico

Ok now I'm a bit confused, especially with your term "templates" wouldn't the correct term be "templatedata"? Ok so there is a 2 directory limit so is this ok?
main/www/nico(workarea)/templatedata/internet/news
/data
/presentation
datacapture.cfg

And how bout this?
...(same as above)/internet/products/shoes
...(same as above)/internet/products/shirts
...(same as above)/internet/products/pants
and each of the end dirs ie "shoes" would contain a datacapture.cfg, data directore, and presentation directory.

Is that legal?
thanks, Nico

tvaughan

Hi,

Sorry for the confusion about "templates" versus "templatedata". I forgot that "templatedata" is the standard name (my company often just uses the term "templates"). In terms of my posts, they are the same thing.

In your example, the directories "shoes", "shirts", and "pants" are all illegal. You can create the directories, but when you go to create a new shoes DCR which should be controlled by the datacapture.cfg here:

/templatedata/internet/products/shoes/datacapture.cfg

It won't show you anything. In this exmample, "internet" is the category and "products" is the type. That's it. There isn't a "sub type" allowed underneath "products." (Keep in mind I'm using TST 5.0.1, but I don't think they've changed for version 5.5).

What you might want to do is get rid of the "internet" level and move everything up one. Maybe you can reflect the fact that this content is for the internet (instead of intranet or extranet) via different branch structures. I'm not sure that'll work for your company, though.

An alternative would be have the datacapture.cfg for the internet/products type have a radio button that specifies that the data you are collecting (price, color, SKU, etc) is for "shoes", "shirts" or "pants." In that case, you could train your users to use something like this:


nico/templatedata/internet/
                           /news/
                                 /data/
                                 /presentation/
                                 /datacapture.cfg
                          /products/
                                 /data/
                                      /shoes/
                                      /shirts/
                                      /pants/
                                 /templatedata/
                                 /datacapture.cfg

I would only recommed this case if your single "internet/products/datacapture.cfg" is capturing essentially all the same types of information about the various products. You can train your users to save their DCR xml files in a different sub-directory of the "internet/products/data" directory (although nothing would stop them from **** that up). And then you could have different presentation template files (TPL) under your ("internet/products/presentation) directory like shoes.tpl, shirts.tpl and pants.tpl.

Not a pretty solution, but you gotta work around the 2-level "major"/"minor" limitations.

Tom