⭐ 1.3 Getting organized

Before we begin making websites, we will need some media to share. Let’s start by looking at our files and ensuring everything is organized and ready to share.

At first glance, it may seem like we are working with ‘photos’ or ‘films’ or ‘soundtracks’, but at the end of the day, as far as your website is concerned, these are just files. Organizing your files is an essential first step to building any portfolio. You want to make sure everything is in one place and easily accessible, as well as backed up and clearly labelled.

Make a project folder

We all organize our digital assets differently, but with cloud-based computing, keeping a local collection of media can take time and effort. Just think of how many pictures you have taken on your phone.  How are they stored? How do you access them if you need to? If you want to take the guesswork out of this project, I always suggest setting up a unique project folder to get started. Name your folder something unique and clear. For this presentation I have named my folder “please-share”. I do not use capital letters or spaces in my project folders for reasons that will become clear particularly if you make it to the ‘expert’ level, using Github to store your collection.

Filing Tip!  For most projects with a large number of files, using sub-folders will help you to keep track of things.

Rename your files

File names can be tricky when you are dealing with media. If you have a disciplined workflow with how your media is generated and backed up, or if you are using professional tools like Adobe you may not require this step because the software can keep track of things for you. Any file name that is auto-generated from your camera or from editing software like Camtasia or Audacity will typically not be as readable by humans but rather will have a long series of letters and abbreviations that only make sense to the software. Consider the filenames of the images you take when you use the camera on your phone. When you download them to a folder, like we are going to do, the filename itself will not be able to tell you much about the image except perhaps the date it was taken. Reviewing and editing these filenames before adding them to a gallery or portfolio will help keep them easily findable when you are searching to upload them to various parts of your websites. The larger your collection of media, the more important this step is.

Filing Tip!  For this project, it would be a good idea to make copies of the files you are working on instead of editing the originals.

Resize your files!

This is particularly important if you are downloading and working with pictures from your phone or exported from Photoshop.  Your images should be ‘web ready’ to preserve bandwidth and energy consumption. You may want to try out several image sizes, but in general, a good rule of thumb is never to upload a picture larger than 1000 pixels in any dimension.