Changing the way I build websites

I’m changing the way I build websites and moving towards a different front end workflow. Nothing too revolutionary for most of you I’m sure but it feels like a change for me. Here’s what I’m doing.

Changing how my sites are organised

For many years, my site structure has been /css, /images, /scripts, /js etc but this gets a bit unwieldy with some sites. So, I’ve decided to move to a structure where I have a single folder with site assets (used on the site). I’m intending to have /assets/css, /assets/images, /assets/js etc. The single /assets folder means I can upload the whole folder if I need/want to.

Outside of the /assets folder in the site root will be my pages, sub-folders for some site sections, /news, /blog etc. and also folders for /fireworks (parent images, I use Fireworks for image editing) and for /scss. At the moment, these folders with parent files are in the site root but I might move towards an assets/dev folder at some point. All comments welcome!

Note: I don’t use Sass very heavily but I still want a folder for .scss files.

Changing the build process

I’m using Brackets editor and Prepros as my default tools now. I still use Dreamweaver but less and less. I wrote about my Dreamweaver usage previously but with the advent of Creative Cloud (which I haven’t joined), my CS6 version just seems less useful for me. Moving forward, I’m using PHP includes and Perch layouts in my sites and live browser reload (with Prepros) to preview the pages.

Overall

I’m quite conservative with what I use because I need to be convinced that new things actually improve what I’m doing (rather than just being different). However, it’s exciting to change to a different workflow that’s better for me!