I heard that anyone visiting a site can easily determine the site folder structure by going on the internet and "doing something". : )
What is it you do? A potential client of mine has a site that is all over the place. I would like to figure out how the previous webmaster set up the file structure for the pages of the site. Any advice would be welcome!
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sqsm81 mentions a great site to use. The way of 'going to the internet and doing something' seems a little vauge, but I'm guessing it has to do with clicking on varoius pages on the aforementioned website while paying attention to the web address. After each backslash gives a folder name or file name. Depending on order. For instance www.xyz.com/folder/subfold
I have a mac. Will this work on a mac? Also, I don't know if I am interested in downloading site at this time. I just wanted to see their file structure. Person I talked to implied their was a url you go could to to see this. I don't know if the url was a modification of the url or if it was a site you go to.
I did some digging and found this:
The link below describes a website that shows the structure of a website as a color coded graph.
http://www.creativetechs.c
The actual site that does this is below:
http://www.aharef.info/sta
The color coded graph is pretty but doesn't really tell me anything. I am looking for a file directory structure that I can see online that shows me how the site is set up. I have run across websites in the past that either aren't uploaded correctly or are not working right and I have see file folders and directories in place of an actual website. Maybe that is what he is talking about. Is there a way to view that online? If so, what do I type in the url?
something like this?
http://www.apache.org/dist
This is an example of what your looking for correct?
To view it like that you will need the FTP password to the site. Try following the steps here:
http://www.cs.colostate.ed
I tried this with my site since I know my ftp info and IP address. DIdn't work. Not sure what I did wrong.
I used this as a sample
ftp://yourLoginName@IPaddr
I typed in my ftp login and my ip and it opened up my ftp program Transmit on my computer with a failed connection.
You can also look at tools like httrack to create a local copy of the website and the structure using whatever tools you have handy.
Keep in mind that the apparent directory structure returned when you spider a web site don't necessarily map to the actual directory structure because of aliases, etc.. And if the site uses a content management system in the background, the content might reside in a database rather than flat files.
Most of these tools also check for broken links, etc.. If there's a filesystem backing the site, you can also use tools like checklink to check for orphaned files (files in the site's directory structure that aren't referenced by any web pages).
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by: sgsm81Posted on 2009-10-28 at 13:37:56ID: 25688027
you could use www.webreaper.net to download the site to your local machine (in a folder of your choosing) which you can then browse locally and investigate the structure