It's all to easy to have broken links to other parts of your site - avoid this by having a mirror image of your web site on your hard drive.

Unless your web site has only one page, with no graphics,
you'll have internal links. That's links to other parts of
your site, or to pictures that you've included on your page.

To avoid basic errors such as linking to pictures or pages
that are in another subdirectory, I find it best to set up
a complete mirror of my web site on my PC.

For example, on a large site I may plan to have each one of
my web pages in a subdirectory, images for each page in an
images directory within each subdirectory, and a *common
images* subdirectory.

So that's what I set up on my hard drive. I create a
directory, giving it the name of my site. That represents
the root directory on the web server.

Then I create my *common images* directory - this will hold
images that are used by every page, for example banners,
site logos, navigation buttons. Doing this saves space on
your server, and makes your pages load more quickly.

Finally I create the subdirectories for each page, and the
image directories inside each subdirectory.

Now, when I start creating my pages and graphics, I save
them in the correct directory. I can check the site in my
browser, and any missing pictures or broken page links will
show up straight away.

Once my site is up and running, I make sure I keep my mirror
image of it up to date, then I don't get any nasty surprises
when I upload changes.

I can also view my site without having to go on-line if
necessary.

Happy site building!

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Dianne Reuby is co-author of the e-book "First Website
Builder". Dianne created and runs the First Web Builder
site, dedicated to providing ebooks and tips for new
webmasters.
Visit FWB at http://firstwebbuilder.co.uk/
AOL

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