Thread

I am about to set up a new site on a fresh install and I would like to have some input on how/where I should be creating my directories such as my js, images, css folders?

I have my templates created and they are in system/expressionengine/templates/default_site.

Is it within this directory that I should be creating the above mentioned folders?
On the same note, will {site_url} now be the equivalent of this directory?
(i.e. “{site_url}js” is the same as “system/expressionengine/templates/default_site/js”)

In relation to this, if all of my templates are held in a templates folder, could someone explain what the “themes” folder is for?

Im a little blurry on how themes fit into all of this…

Hi swhinck welcome to the forums.

You can set up directories for your sites assets any ay you want, though I wouldn’t recommend putting js/image/css files inside the /system directory.

One common approach is to use an /assets directory for all your sites assets, eg

/assets/images
/assets/js
- you could also have external CSS files here, or you can include as a CSS template.

For general uploads, eg when adding an image to an entry, again you can set things up however you wish, for image uploads you could use a standard /images directory and subdirs as needed.

Does that help?

The “themes” folder contains, yep theme files for various areas such as

Control panel
Stock Member profile templates
3rd party addons that require special templates
Wiki templates

thank you that helps clear things up a bit.
I may have gone wrong then however.

I set up a default_site within the “themes” folder and that is where my site files/folders are sitting.
themes/default_site/images
themes/default_site/js
themes/default_site/home.group
for example…

This is not the common practice I take it?
Am I opening myself up to future problems in doing it this way?

If you develop templates offline the normal locations is in /system/expressionengine/templates, and you can store images/js in any other folder. That’s the common location.

You can store images/js and templates files in the /themes folder if you wish - make sure you set the path under Global template preferences to make sure the template can syncronise when you update them.